


Four Weddings and a Dragon

by diamonddaydream



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Break Up, Comfort, Daddy Issues, Dragons, F/M, Fake Marriage, Family, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, Happy Ending, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts Forbidden Forest, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Minor Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley, Minor Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Mutual Pining, Names, Past Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Post-Hogwarts, Potions, Rare Pairings, Romanian Dragon Sanctuary (Harry Potter), Romantic Fluff, Sweet, Tension, The Burrow (Harry Potter), Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27493909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diamonddaydream/pseuds/diamonddaydream
Summary: When Charlie Weasley takes Hermione Granger to visit the recovering Gringott's dragon, something sparks. Years later, after disaster strikes her long engagement, she finds herself in Romania in search of dragon-care lore, manipulated by a mad old witch, and discovering that Charlie in his element is much more than a spark. Soft, sweet, snuggly, and fluffy. HEA. Complete
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Charlie Weasley
Comments: 88
Kudos: 323





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> What the heck am I doing? A bit stressed this week so playing with something different: Charmione. Why the heck not?

Charlie Weasley did not remember meeting Hermione Granger. If he did, he would have recalled the reason why Ginny had slept in a separate tent from himself and the rest of the boys at the Quidditch World Cup. She was hosting a guest: a bushy-haired girl tagging along with Harry Potter.

No, Charlie remembered none of that.

By the time, years later, when they’d all gathered at the Burrow for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, under the shadow of a looming war, Charlie knew to expect to see Hermione there. She had become a family habit somehow. Charlie wasn’t sure how it had happened, but he did know why. Ronnie was in love with her. Everyone knew it but her.

Still, when Hermione came into the kitchen while Molly was cutting Charlie’s hair, crashing around in a flustered rush, looking for Ron’s missing something-or-other, Charlie jumped in his chair at the sight of her. She was a full-grown witch, now of age. Somehow, he hadn’t expected it to happen.

His jump had caused Molly to hack off a much larger chunk of his hair than they’d agreed to when he first sat down to the trim. 

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Charlie! I didn’t mean to startle you and -- oh, look what I’ve done?” Hermione said, scooping the fallen ginger lock from the floor and reaching for her wand. “Mrs. Weasley, if you’ll let me --”

“No, no, no,” Molly said. “You’ve done him nothing but a great favour, Hermione dear. No, we’ve no choice but to cut the rest to match this nice short bit.” And with that, she took full advantage of the situation, tipping Charlie’s head forward and carving deeply into his shaggy mass of red hair.

With his chin against his chest, Charlie looked sideways at Hermione as she stood beside them, helpless, still holding his severed hair. Charlie’s expression was one part exasperation, one part amusement. When he caught Hermoine’s eye, he rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“For star’s sake, boy, hold still,” Molly scolded.

They broke their eye contact, Hermione looking down to the hair in her hand. Some of the ends seemed like they were melted together.

Charlie was best man at the wedding. During the ceremony, Hermione didn’t dare look at Bill. Everyone outside his family had a crush on Bill on some level, and everyone would have to give it up now that he was a married man. Bridal Fleur was too showy to look at for long, and her maid of honor, her sister Gabrielle who Ron had helped to rescue from the Black Lake -- something about her made Hermione vaguely angry. That left Charlie Weasley as the only safe place to look.

It was too bad about his haircut. He looked like he was on leave from the Muggle military. Ah well. There was no such thing as a Weasley aesthetic Hermione couldn’t appreciate. Charlie was shorter than the rest -- except, perhaps, for Percy, who wasn’t here. It meant he was less gangly, more classically proportioned. His arms weren’t just shorter but thicker, like he used them to work, not just for gripping a broom over a Quidditch pitch. Though he had been known to do that too, if Hermione remembered correctly. Chaser -- he had been a chaser, Ron had told her. She’d wondered what that would be like. Maybe she could goad the brothers into an arm wrestling competition later, odds stacked in Charlie’s favour.

She shivered, but not unpleasantly. Time to look at something else…

\---------------------

Ron was taking forever to ask her to dance at the wedding reception. Maybe he had no plans to ask her at all. Maybe he was winding himself up to ask Gabrielle. She might have felt sad about it if Viktor Krum hadn’t swept in, here as a guest of Fleur’s, of course.

Did she still waltz as well as she did at the Yule Ball? Oh, Viktor.

She didn’t see Ron reprising his role from the Yule Ball right along with them, glowering heartbroken from the other side of the tent as she turned across the floor with Viktor. 

But Charlie saw it. He could see something rising with the splotchy red colour in Ron’s cheeks. If Hermione Granger was left to keep dancing with Krum, Ronnie was going to do something stupid.

Charlie cut in.

“Excuse me,” he said. “My mother thinks best man duty includes kitchen duty, so I’ve only got a few minutes left for dancing and I promised one to Hermione. Would you mind, Mr. Krum?”

Viktor let go of Hermione’s waist, but kissed her hand as he backed away, vowing to finish their dance later. 

Charlie pivoted in front of her. Chaser indeed…

“Sorry,” he said as he took her hand. “Ronnie was about to go spare.”

She huffed, tossing her head and reaching up toward his shoulder. Charlie noticed her blush all the same. “I can’t imagine why,” she said.

Charlie chuckled as his hand found the bend of her waist. “Because he fancies you rotten, of course. How could he fail to, after all the amazing things he’s seen you do? I had to intervene with Krum before Ron did something he’d regret and turned this lovely event into a brawl. That’s the real best man duty I’m about right now.”

Hermione’s face was still flushed. “No worries about Ronald laying hands on anyone over me,” she said miserably. “Maybe if I was taken up by a giant or something but -- what I’m saying is, when men pay attention to me, Ronald lashes out at me, not at them.”

Charlie winced. “No. Really?”

She nodded. “Have you ever heard the name ‘Lavender Brown’?”

He frowned. “That’s a name? It sounds like a paint colour.”

And Hermione was laughing, leaning to bounce her forehead off Charlie’s shoulder.

“I apologize for my ridiculous baby brother,” Charlie said as she raised her face again. “Boys mature slower -- isn’t that the excuse we’ve given ourselves?” He extended his arm and spun her underneath it. “Not that I’m an expert. The only ‘girls’ I hang around are 300 stone, scaly, and would just as soon roast me to a crisp.”

“Ooo, dragons,” Hermione cooed. “They don’t mistreat them in Romania, do they?”

He shook his head. “At our sanctuary? No. That’s why I chose it. Are you interested in the care of magical creatures? Ron's never mentioned it.”

“Not the practical aspects of it,” she admitted. “But I believe there are serious deficits in British statutes about the humane treatment of magical creatures. House elves, for instance…” And their dance ended with Charlie requesting she owl him half a dozen S.P.E.W. badges, if she ever got the chance.

She never did dance with Ron at the wedding. As soon as the music changed and Charlie let her go, Hermione fled the dancefloor. It felt more like a minefield. 

But late in the night, after the wedding had been raided, and they’d fled to London, and fought their way to Grimmauld Place, she lay holding Ron’s hand on the drawing room floor. It was smoother than Charlie’s, smaller but with longer fingers. 

How much older than them was Charlie? Seven years? By the time she was twenty-three and he was thirty, they’d feel like peers to each other. Maybe she could travel to central Europe and he could host her on a tour of his humane dragon sanctuary, and she could work to have its policies made into enforceable laws all over Europe.

She turned Ron’s boyish hand over in her own, watching his chest rising and falling as he slept beside her in the silver moonlight coming through the drawing room window. He looked so young in his sleep, angelic. He and Harry were all she had, now that her parents were gone. Ron had assured her she was doing the right thing in sending them away. He hadn’t tried to talk her out of it, but cheered her on. He had been standing outlined in the yellow light of the Burrow’s kitchen door, his arms outstretched to hold her, his face against her hair when she’d arrived sobbing after leaving home for the last time. 

She had loved his family for years -- Arthur and Molly, the twins, Ginny. She’d been lightly infatuated with Bill, estranged from Percy along with the rest of them, and now there was Charlie. Yes, she could love kind, strong Charlie too. He was older, like Bill, but comfortable and wise, almost like -- 

Oh hang it, Hermione, she scolded herself. Don’t go and give yourself daddy issues, starring Charlie Weasley as the replacement father, with his broad shoulders and rough hands and the nerve and grace to do something besides glare like a sulky prat when she danced with Viktor Krum. 

No, she would stay in love with Ronald. She would. And she mashed a fierce kiss against the back of his sleeping hand to seal it. 

\-------------------------

“We meet for weddings and funerals, eh Hermione?” Charlie said as he approached her in the yard of Burrow just as the sun had set. He had found her standing in the tall grass that had grown up where Bill and Fleur’s wedding tent had been, almost a year before, when Fred was still alive, and Percy wouldn't speak to them, and Ronnie wasn't a war hero.

“I suppose. Weddings and funerals, and at the beginning and the end of the war,” she said.

Charlie raised his eyebrows. “Beginning?”

She gave a weak smile. “You don’t remember. I was at the Quidditch World Cup with all of you, the night the Dark Mark was cast for the first time in this war.”

Charlie nodded. “Ah.” He glanced around the empty field. “Where’s Ronnie? I thought the pair of you were joined at the palm of the hand now.”

She raised her hand and looked at her empty palm. Her smile was weaker than ever. “I’m trying, Charlie. There’s a lot of strain in a relationship, when you feel like you’re someone’s prize for their heroism. Like a stupid cup that doesn’t change anything once you’ve actually got hold of it. Can’t fix or heal much of anything. Just a cup.”

Charlie snagged her empty hand, holding it roughly in his own, swinging it between them. “It’ll take time,” he said. “Be patient with him. You’re not doing anything wrong. This is just awful. That’s what it is. And it’s not like you aren’t grieving losses of your own.”

Her shoulders slumped and she swayed on her feet. Charlie stepped into her, catching her when it looked like she might fall. “Oh, Charlie,” she said, near tears. “I can’t begin to tell you.”

He pushed her hair out of her face so he could see her when he said, “Hey, can I show you something? Something I saved for you?”

She blinked, not a clue of what it could be. “Of course.” 

He was turning on the spot, and with a dizzying snap they were gone from the Burrow, standing in Hogwarts’ forbidden forest instead, the ruin of the castle hidden from view by tall trees. She gasped when she realized where they were all the same.

“It’s alright,” Charlie said, still holding her. “Come this way, and keep quiet. Not even Hagrid knows this is here.”

She followed him through dense brush, creeping as soundlessly as they could, her hand pressed to his broad back so she didn’t lose him.

“Right, now wait here until I get some light.”

She gasped again as Charlie left her for a moment. She stood alone in the forest, conscious of every creak in the trees, and scuttle through the leaf litter. The air of the place was thick with so many memories, frights from her childhood and beyond. Her breath was coming faster. Was she panicking? Was she panicking about the possibility that she might panic? 

She couldn’t stand it anymore, she called in a whisper, “Charlie!”

From one hundred metres away, a soft white light began to glow. It moved and grew, illuminating the trees until it shone on one enormous clawed foot. Charlie Weasley had brought her to see a dragon. It was bowing its head, curving over its foot, bringing one great, milky eye into the light. That was when she heard Charlie laugh and say, “There’s my girl. Hello. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

Hermione let out a little cry of relief. This was her dragon, the one that had set them free from Gringnott’s Bank. She had ridden on its back, fixed herself to its spines and soared high over London and away from harm -- at least for a little while. But then she had watched it fly away, ratty and half-starved.

“She’s alright?” Hermione said, coming to stand by Charlie. “Ron said she would be. By the stars, Charlie, look at her. She’s magnificent. And so -- so content.”

“Ron said she was alright when she left you? He had no idea what he’s talking about then,” Charlie answered, not rising to defend his youngest brother for the first time in Hermione’s memory. “She was collapsed on a moor when we found her, too weak to hunt, disoriented. We brought her here to get her well enough to travel somewhere safe. If no one had called her in though -- I hate to think what would have happened, after everything she’s been through, locked up underground, fed on whatever rotting carrion they threw down to her, conditioned with pain. Bill always said there were rumors of dragons being kept to guard the most elite vaults in that pit of a bank, but he dismissed it as a bluff. As unimaginable, which it ought to have been.”

Hermione shook her head. “No, she was down there, suffering for stars only know how long. I saw it.”

“And you ended it,” Charlie finished for her. “It’s really a shame you can’t see her in the daylight again. She’s improved so much, so quickly you might not recognize her. We’ve kept her fed, and salved her wounds, conditioned her scales -- “

“Her eyes,” Hermione interrupted. “Why couldn’t you do anything for them?”

Charlie frowned. “Why would we bother with her eyes? They’re perfect.”

“But the cataracts -- “

“Cataracts?” Charlie snickered. “She’s an opal-eye. Did she seem blind to you when she was flying you all over the country?”

“No, but they said she was a Ukrainian Iron-belly -- “

“Well, they were wrong,” he said. “Whoever they are. This is definitely an opal-eye, native to New Zealand. I have no idea how she would have come to be here. That’s quite the black market those banker goblins have got. But none of that matters now. As soon as we’ve got the tranquilizing potions in order, she’s going to a proper, ethical sanctuary to finish her rehabilitation, and then back to her native environment in the southern hemisphere.”

At that, Hermione broke down and cried, loud enough that the dragon began to rumble and shift on its feet.

Charlie bundled Hermione in his arms again, hushing her and leading her away. They sat under a tree, Hermione perched on Charlie’s knees like a child. “Hey, what’s the matter?” he asked, low and gentle. “I thought you’d be happy to see her. I heard you were concerned.”

“I am. I was,” Hermione sobbed. “It’s just -- just that New Zealand is so close to -- to Australia.” At this, her sobs renewed themselves.

Charlie pulled her face into his chest, partly to comfort her, partly to quiet her so the dragon wouldn’t make her anxiety its own. “I still don’t understand. Australia? Please, Hermione…”

She told him. She told him about sending her parents away without any memory of her. She told him she didn’t get advice from anyone but Ron before she did it. And she told him what Ron had given as the reason why he hadn’t done the same to protect all of the Weasleys.

“We couldn’t leave our jobs?” Charlie repeated. “He thought we could defend ourselves which, as Fred proved, was not the case. And then he argued that we couldn’t leave our jobs? What kind of idiotic, short-sighted, capitalist -- “

Hermione had never seen Charlie mad at Ron, and she couldn’t bear it. “What? Do you mean you wish Ronald had sent the lot of you off to Australia under a memory charm?”

“No, of course not,” Charlie answered. “But I wish he’d offered your parents some kind of help. Something you couldn’t provide, but others could have. I mean, Mum and Dad were already targets for being close to Harry. Your parents may have well holed up in the Burrow under their protection. It makes no sense. I know Ron was only seventeen with a lot left to learn, but how could he -- “

“Please, Charlie,” she wept. “Please, it’s done.”

He clamped his arms around her, holding her for real this time, not to support or contain her but out of real affection and sorrow. “You don’t have to be alone,” he said. “You are a brilliant, beautiful woman. You will be loved by whoever you choose. Whether it’s Ron, or someone else in your life, or someone you don’t even know right now.”

Her arms had closed around him in return, and she wept against his beating heart.

“You’re not trapped with us,” Charlie whispered against her hair. “The entire world is still yours, if you want it.”

Under the tree, she sat in Charlie’s lap and clung to him as the last of her sobs subsided. He felt her relax and left off stroking her back. His touch had been firm and slow. When she was upset and almost feral, like this, Hermione was not so very much unlike a dragon -- a marvelous, warm, and fragile dragon that needed his touch.

When she sat back and looked up at his face, Hermione’s human composure had almost completely returned. “How smart is a dragon like this?” she asked. “She seemed to recognize you.”

He shook his head. “They’re smart, but not like a centaur or an elf or what have you. More like a very clever raven. She recognizes people, will pay tribute to people who feed and care for her, but she’s very much a wild animal. She has a kind of intelligence, but it’s wild. There is no such thing as a dragon tamer. That’s a slur. There are animal behavior specialists, like my colleagues and I, but we’re researchers and scholars. No, every dragon is always crafty and wild.”

Hermione hummed. “I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved to hear that.” She cocked her head, almost bird-like. “Do you want to know the truth about me, Charlie?”

“There’s more?”

“Yes. And the truth is, I’m not as smart as everyone thinks. Not really.”

Charlie had never been at school with Hermione, and had no reason not to believe her. But he did ask, “What do you mean by not so smart?”

“I’m crafty, but I’m not wild. I don’t follow my heart as much as a truly smart person, someone who was both would. I always waited for Ron or Harry to do the heart-work. My heart is under-developed,” she said.

Charlie scoffed. “Look at the way you were fretting over the well-being of this dragon -- this beast most people, even magical people, would reject as a monster. No, there is nothing wrong with your heart.”

She withdrew one of her arms from around Charlie and placed her hand over her heart. “Well, I felt for the dragon, but I didn’t act on those feelings. I sat still and let Ronald dissuade me. That’s what’s under-developed. My power to act on my heart.”

Charlie smirked. “Alright then. If you were acting on your heart right now, tonight, what would you do?”

She was quiet, her hand still feeling her own heartbeat in the dark.

When she didn’t answer, Charlie began to quiz her. “Would you cuddle that dragon? Find the latest book on memory spells and a port key to Australia? Go home and make your Ronald breakfast before the sun comes up? Maybe even -- “

Without a word, she followed her heart. She straightened her posture, tipped her head, and kissed Charlie Weasley on the mouth. He answered first with a grunt of surprise. Afraid he was pulling away, she leaned into him. The back of his head met the bark of the tree behind them and stopped. But the kiss didn’t.

Hermione Granger’s mouth was small, sweet, and nimble. Her hand was no longer pressed to her heart but to his. Her other hand was cupped around his neck, her fingertips in the hair that had grown long again at the nape of his neck. It wasn’t soft and wispy, like Ron’s, but dense and coarse, like a pelt. Thank the stars it wasn’t like Ron’s…

Charlie moved his mouth against hers, slowly and gently, opening to her pressure, letting her find what she needed. For the first moments, he kept still, alert and responsive but subtle, unthreatening, like he was meeting a new, possibly dangerous creature for the first time. 

He couldn’t sustain it for long. His eyes closed and his arms crushed her closer, his breath sighing out of him, released. 

Stars, how long had it been since he’d kissed someone like this? He didn’t fancy men and that was all they had working in the sanctuary right now. Not that an abundance of women would have made much of a difference. At age twenty-five, Charlie could still count the number of women he’d kissed on one hand. And it usually happened like this. Some powerful witch, like Nymphadora Tonks in that stairwell in sixth year, would get fed up with his nice as you please Charlie-ways and just come at him.

None of that meant he didn’t like it. But there was more to being with a woman like this than what he liked. He had to think -- think about this entire woman and not just her hands on his neck and chest, and her mouth on his, and her weight bearing down on his lap. Remember, Charlie, remember who she is and how she’s connected not just to you but to everyone you love. And the mind the way her desire is not waning, not venting. Its pitch is rising, roaring…

“Ronnie,” he said, breaking away. “I’m sorry, Hermione. This can’t be me with you like this. I’m like Ron, but I’m not him. And I can’t do this to him, or to you.”

She whimpered as she twisted sideways, coming out of his lap, eliciting another grunt from him as she dragged herself across him. She sat on the ground. “Now you’ll think I’m a slag.”

He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I think you’re distraught. Traumatized. Rightly angry with the boy you love. And very young.”

She leaned into his fingers. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

He stroked her jaw with his thumb and dropped his hand. “If he kisses better than me, you must never, ever tell anyone.”

She grinned. “You want to know about Ron’s kissing?”

“No, that’s what I just -- “

“Go stick your head in that dragon’s mouth. That’s about it.“

Charlie’s hands were clamped over his ears. “No! I said not to -- “

“Not to let you know if he was better than you. And that is certainly not what I am telling you. Oh, give over, Charlie,” she said, swatting his hands away from his ears. “So Ron’s still a bit mouthy. So what? He’s young, as you’ve said. In his puppy years. So we’re working on it. I blame his stunted growth entirely on his last girlfriend.”

“Lilac Bronze?”

“Lavender Brown!” she was laughing.

In the darkness beyond them, the dragon’s sulphurous lungs rumbled like a combustion engine about to turn over. Charlie stood up. “Come on, Granger. Let’s let our darling get some undisturbed sleep.”

She took his hand and stood beside him. “Right. Let’s go home.”


	2. Two

The next Weasley weddings were George’s and Percy’s. Hermione attended both of them as Ron’s official girlfriend, leaning on his arm and beaming through the ceremonies, then following Molly’s orders, managing the festivities during the receptions. Charlie was at each of the weddings, of course, but Hermione danced with no one but Ron, and not until the end of the night, when everyone else was gone, and she was exhausted, barefoot and hardly moving as Ron held her up and whispered promises into her work-frizzed hair.

Ginny and Harry’s wedding was different. 

Ginny had put off the engagement until she’d finished school, and the wedding until she’d played Quidditch with an elite team for a year. Even so, she presided over her wedding as a very young bride. Fleur and Bill were there with their war celebration baby. George and Percy were there with their pregnant wives. And Ron was there with Bill’s sister-in-law, once the little girl from the lake, Gabrielle Delacour. She had come to stay at Shell Cottage to help with the baby. And Ron, exceptionally vulnerable as he had always been to the charms of Veela ancestry, had fallen for her. He seemed heartbroken about leaving Hermione for her, but he did it all the same.

Hermione sat at Harry and Ginny’s traditional wedding at the Burrow with Hagrid and McGonagall and a squad of Aurors on Harry’s side of the aisle, away from the Weasleys. As a sign of her resilience and fierce independence, she had come without a date, but she came to regret it. She should have brought the most obnoxious date she could think of. 

She should have brought Krum. No, he was too polite. 

What about one of those Slytherin gits from school? She could have rung up Gregory Goyle. He owed her a huge favour after that fiendfyre rescue. But he owed Ron too. It wouldn’t have worked. 

No, Draco -- she should have turned over whatever rock Draco Malfoy had been hiding under since he denounced blood purity at his trial, and put his fine new ideals to the test by bringing him here as a Mudblood’s date. She could just see him, sneering at all of this, awful but fit and shining, dressed all in black, no doubt. Ron would have lost his mind. Next time....

But there would be no next time. The next Weasley wedding would be Ron’s, and she knew he would send her an invitation, and she would politely decline. It would be expected of her. She’d claim it was in the middle of a non-refundable trip she’d already had booked or something. Maybe she’d send a gift of a Muggle toaster for them.

Applause was jarring her out of these fantasies. While she hadn’t been paying attention, Harry and Ginny had promised themselves to each other for life. Ron, the best man, was standing at Harry’s elbow as he kissed Ron’s sister, clapping as if he believed in such things.

With the ceremony over, Hermione rose from her borrowed folding chair, turned around and collapsed it flat for transport back wherever it came from. When she finished with her own, she moved on to the rest, working to clear the floor for dancing. She was on her sixth chair when a pair of rough, freckled hands closed over hers. 

“Hermione, don’t bother with that.” It was Charlie Weasley, his face open and worried.

She snatched her hands away. “Why? Because I’m not family anymore?” Her voice was louder than she’d intended.

Charlie stepped closer, whispering. “Come, now. You don’t want to make a show of yourself. Come with me and we’ll get you something to drink.”

She huffed. “And how did you get stuck with managing-the-ex duty, Charlie Weasley? Is it your secret official role in your sister’s wedding party? Is it jotted on a list somewhere in your mother’s wedding files? They figured they’d need to enlist a dragon tamer for it?”

By the time she’d reached the words, “dragon tamer” her voice was loud enough for everyone under the tent to hear it. All of the Weasleys cringed at once, pained at the sound of a description for Charlie they all recognized as offensive to him. 

It took a moment longer for Hermione to cringe herself. Charlie had withdrawn his hands from hers, but she clawed him back, dropping a hand on Charlie’s shoulder, her fingers curling into the fabric of his dress robes, clenching into a fist. “By the stars, Charlie, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quieter now, cracking with tears. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It slipped out -- “

He took her hand from his shoulder, holding it in his, spinning her around, his other hand at the small of her back, leading her out of the tent.

“Oi, is she alright?” Harry whisper-called over his shoulder as they passed him on their way out.

Charlie nodded and nodded. “Yeah, fine. Just needs some air. No worries, Harry. Gin.”

Outside, her quick breaths became sniffles, which became tears. Charlie walked her to the end of the little wooden dock at the pond and tugged at her arm until she sat beside him. 

“I’m sorry Charlie. I know what it’s like to be called names. I was angry, but for no good reason. And even if I was, it’s unforgivable -- “

“It’s not,” he said. “I forgive you, of course. Honestly, it sounded more like a slip of the tongue than anything else. Just forget it.” He passed her a clean handkerchief. 

She dabbed at her face as Charlie stared straight ahead, out over the still water. “You don’t have to stay out here with me,” she said. “Ginny will want you inside. I’m going to apparate home in just a minute. Go ahead and enjoy yourself with your loved ones.”

He sighed and patted her knee. “Not yet.”

“I’m done crying. Honestly. I will never cry over Ronald Weasley again,” she said. As if to prove it, she Scourgified the handkerchief and passed it back to Charlie.

He folded it into his pocket, pinching each crease between his fingers. “Well, good. Because now that you’ve finished with Ron, I’m the one who needs to be seeing you.”

Her face flushed instantly and deeply red. “What?”

“I mean,” he hurried to say. “I mean to say, I need to see you in Romania. We just got a request from the British Ministry of Magic for input on a white paper on the ethical treatment of dragons and related fire lizards.”

Her face broke into a genuine smile for the first time that day. “Oh, Charlie, that’s wonderful.”

“Yes, and I’d like it if we could work together to make sure the thing is written properly. It shouldn’t just cover care and feeding. It needs to expose the black market trade, and the use of dragons as watchdogs in Gringotts and places like it. So look for the message when you’re back at work. Then come to me in Romania. You and I might never get a chance like this again.”

“Chance to…?”

“To have input on shaping the national policy.” Charlie stammered to a conclusion.

She sprung forward and pecked a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Charlie. You will definitely be seeing me in Romania.” She was standing up, taking her leave.

“You’re going home anyway?” he asked. “After I succeeded in cheering you up? You’re going to send me back in there empty-handed?”

“Well, yes. I’ve got notes to make. Statutes to pull from the library. Cases against Gringotts that suggest dragon involvement -- “

“Fine, fine,” Charlie said, satisfied that she was feeling like herself again. “Go take care of yourself. I’ll be seeing you in Romania.”

\--------------------------------------

The international portkey from London to Bucharest was easy enough to use. Getting from Bucharest to the Carpathian Mountains where the dragon sanctuary was hidden was something else entirely. 

Hermione spoke no Romanian -- none that anyone could understand. It was something like Italian but all shot through with Russian. She had learned before leaving that she would have to travel inside Romania by something like the British Floo system. It would work once she found it, but the hard years in Romania had driven the wizarding world deeper underground than it was in Britain. The country’s surviving Floos were mostly in very old churches, and she went from one church to another, all over Bucharest looking for the right one, hoping she’d be able to pronounce the name of the sanctuary intelligibly enough once she found it.

Eventually, she gave up. There was too much at risk and she needed help she couldn’t find.

“Sorry to disturb you, Charlie. I need you to send me a map or some such guide to get to the Floo church.” She spoke the message into her patronus as she cast it into a dim, smelly alleyway. With that taken care of, she ordered herself what she hoped was coffee and sat at a tiny table outside a cafe, exhausted, slightly embarrassed, waiting.

Just minutes later, he appeared, coming through the crowd in leather dragon armour like a Muggle tourist cos-playing a Romanian vampire fantasy.

“Hermione!” he called when he saw her.

She lifted her gaze from contemplating her coffee to see him striding toward her. He looked like Hephaestus himself, which is something she’d never thought of a Weasley before. He wore knee-high protective dragon hide boots, dark trousers and shirt with the sleeves rolled over his elbows, baring his forearms. 

Ron’s best physical features were his arms, and he knew it. Charlie’s were even better. 

Over everything, he wore a full, heavy leather apron tempered to the contours of his chest, tied snuggly around his waist. His head was capped with more tight, scorched leather, his hair flaring from underneath it, the redness of it more conspicuous in Bucharest than it would have been further north, or at the Burrow, where she usually saw him. There was soot on his face, giving his eyes a flashing, ice blue look by contrast. His hands and arms were clean, as if he’d thrown off a set of large gloves to rush to her.

“Charlie?”

He vaulted over the low partition the cafe had set around its tables on the pavement and took both her hands as he sat beside her. “Hermione, I’m sorry. I should have been here to meet you. I don’t know what I was thinking. This city is the devil for wizard newcomers to navigate.”

“I’m fine,” she said, though she had felt a flush rise up her throat at his appearance. She couldn’t look at his eyes and watched his mouth as they spoke instead, the good, white teeth visible between his parted lips as he waited to hear she was alright. She was remembering the last time she’d come to him to see a dragon, and what had passed between them that night. 

She cleared her throat. “Honestly, Charlie. All I needed were some directions. You didn’t have to come all this way yourself, interrupting your work. Look at you. You look quite involved.” She raised a hand to swipe at the smear of soot on his cheek. It was hopeless and she laughed. “I hope whoever you left in charge is alright.”

“Bogdan? Yeah, he’ll be fine. You, on the other hand -- “

“I am enjoying a coffee, in a beautiful foreign city after a long trip. It’s no hardship. You are sweet to fuss, but there’s no need.”

Charlie’s shoulders relaxed, his head hanging. “I meant to be here. A proper host. Waiting all cleaned up and set to bring you back as an honored emissary of her Majesty the Queen of England’s Ministry of Magic.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Stop it. And there’s no need to apologize for your,” her throat was suddenly husky, “appearance.”

“Fine, but I do apologize for getting caught up in my work and forgetting the time. It’s a fault of mine.”

She huffed. “I do the same. Only I consider it a strength, not a weakness. And I reckon it is for you too, Charlie Weasley.”

Charlie lifted his head, leaned toward her and kissed her quickly and dryly on both cheeks. “Yes, well welcome to the continent, Granger. I’ll apparate us back to the sanctuary whenever you’re ready.”

In the same alley where she’d cast her patronus, Charlie clamped an arm around her waist and pulled her into the front of his apron to prepare for side-along apparation. She laughed and held onto his torso in return. “Is this firm a hold on me really necessary?”

He didn’t answer, but said. “Loved the otter by the way. I’m sure you know they’re classified as mustelids, just like -- “

“Weasels, yes,” she said.

He had almost turned on the spot when he stopped and whirled her back to the position they’d started from. “What’s Ronnie’s patronus? You must know it.”

“Dog. The twins were magpies, Ginny, a horse”

He gave a sharp nod. “Well done, children.”

“And what is yours?” she mused lazily as Charlie wound up again, with much more force than was necessary for apparation. “Don’t tell me: a dragon.”

He didn’t tell her, but simply smirked and spun them away.

In an instant, they were standing in a gravel courtyard rimmed with stone buildings, each of which could have easily been a thousand years old. Tall trees rose up all around them, as if they were standing in the bottom of a bowl. In the distance were the rocky peaks of mountains.

“Here we are,” Charlie announced, making sure she was steady on her feet before letting her go. “Shame we couldn’t come by broom. This is the country’s most beautiful area, if you ask me. Maybe later?”

She shuddered. “Not much of a flyer myself.”

“Not even tandem flying?”

She bowed her head and shook it.

Charlie smirked. “Maybe you just haven’t found the right pilot yet.”

She breathed a laugh, not sure if he was flirting with her. How was she to know when he was acting as a caring older brother sort who knew all the kindest and wisest things to say, and when he was acting as the man who’d kissed her back when she pounced on him underneath a tree in the Forbidden Forest?

If his face hadn’t been so sooty, she might have seen him blushing at himself. “Come on then. The witches’ quarters are this way,” he said. “There’ll be no one staying in them but you. You can rest there until you’re feeling up to seeing the dragons.”

He opened the door to one of the buildings and stepped out of the way to let her pass. Instead, Hermione tossed a small bag through the door and onto the narrow bed inside without stepping in. “If it’s all the same to you, Charlie, I’d like to see them now.”

She followed him out of the courtyard, along a path climbing the rise of the bowl, and into a green paddock beyond it. Two men dressed a lot like Charlie sat on opposite sides of the field, like cowboys in one of the Western movies Hermione’s father liked. They called out to Charlie in Romanian, waving their arms and pointing into the trees at the mouth of a narrow lane.

Charlie clucked his tongue. “He’s sulking again.”

Hermione looked at each of the men in turn. They seemed in good enough spirits to her, shaking their heads and laughing.

“The dragon we were working with when I left,” Charlie qualified. “He’s a real Ukranian Iron-belly. And there’s been something off with him for the past few weeks. He keeps hiding in the woods and only comes out to bully us. He must have got offended when I left to find you.”

Hermione hummed. “So I’m off on the wrong foot with him.”

Charlie huffed. “Everyone is. Always. Come meet Bogdan and Marius.”

Introductions were made, Bogdan and Marius eager to practice their rough English, Hermione embarrassed by her all but nonexistent Romanian. Once they realized how unskilled she was, they fell back into laughing and chattering with Charlie in Romanian. They seemed to be teasing him about her being there, and he seemed to be ignoring it. 

Hermione made a mental note to intensify her study of Romanian.

Eventually they stopped and Marius took up a hose to soak the paddock, part of its fireproofing.

“Neither of them wants to risk death going into the woods to get him, so there’s nothing left to do here right now. How about we catch up with your old friend instead?” Charlie said, leading her away.

“The Anitdopean Opal-eye from Gringott’s? She’s still here?”

Charlie sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. She’s not nearly as old as we thought she was at first. They must have taken her into captivity before she reached maturity. Now she’s healthy, she’s a lovely specimen, and fiercely intelligent, in her way. But her chances of survival if released into the wild are -- well, they’re not good. She wasn’t socialized by other dragons and relies on humans for just about everything.”

“That’s tragic,” Hermione said.

Charlie was nodding. “It is. But it also means, now that she’s come to trust us, she’s uncommonly docile. Everyone’s favourite.”

They were just about to mount another rise, into another dragon paddock when Charlie suddenly turned to face Hermione, halting her steps. “Now, before you see her, you should know that the boys here have given her a name, a name that’s very common among young Romanian women. And you may not like it.”

“Common name? Well, then I reckon it’s not Hermione.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. “They call her Gabriela. It’s carved into a wooden placard fastened to the fence. I didn’t want you to see it unprepared.”

She pursed her lips but otherwise her face was stoic as she said, “My dragon. They call my dragon by the Romanian version of the name of Ronald’s new fiancee.”

“I couldn’t have possibly known when I brought her here -- “

“No, of course you couldn’t have. It’s no one’s fault, Charlie.” She patted him hard on the shoulder. “Thanks for the warning. Let’s press on.”

Just like the first paddock they visited, the opal-eye’s paddock was empty when they arrived. Charlie sauntered to the fence, stuck his fingers in the corners of his mouth, and whistled hard. 

Hermione stood in silence, listening. She waited until Charlie gave a grunt. “Taking longer than usual. What’s keeping her?”

Hermione smirked. “Maybe she’s gone off with your Iron-belly.”

He shook his head. “No, since she was imprisoned in the bank before reaching maturity, she’s not -- erm -- receptive to male dragons the way she should be, so we keep her separate for her own well-being. And even if Sir Iron-belly was madly in love with her, her enclosure is securely warded. He wouldn’t stand a chance -- I mean, he shouldn’t. Dragons -- you just never know.”

He took a deep breath and gave another whistle.

This time there was rustling in the trees, a rumbling and creaking.

“Here we go,” Charlie said, taking Hermione’s arm and pulling her behind him. “A docile dragon is still a dragon. Keep quiet and follow my lead.”

Hermione Granger had seen a lot in her twenty-two years, including this very same dragon. The sight of it emerging from the trees took her breath away all the same, and she tightened her grip in Charlie’s arm. The dragon’s own momentum seemed to be too much for it and it ran off its excess speed by charging in a circle around the perimeter of the fence enchanted with wards to deter it from passing over them. She finished her entrance by rearing up on her muscular hind legs before crashing to rest on the grass.

It still seemed impossible to Hermione that the milky pupil-less eyes weren’t blind, but the dragon was clearly fixed on Charlie, seeing him and lunging toward him. 

“Ela, darling, hello,” he sang to her.

She was boisterous, like a badly trained dog. Clambering in front of him as if she’d like to pick him up in her jaws and shake him like a toy. “Don’t get the wrong idea. She’s only using me for treats,” he explained over his shoulder to Hermione. He flicked a wooden crate open with the toe of his boot, speared a hunk of mutton from inside on the end of a long pole, and pitched it onto the paddock for her to devour.

Hermione watched from behind his bicep, both hands stilled gripped on his arm. “Charlie, she’s beautiful. And so happy. You’ve done a marvelous job with her. She’s certainly filled out since I last saw her. She looks almost -- fat. Well done, you lovely girl.”

But Charlie was frowning. “It’s not fat. Look at the tone of it. Her abdomen is distended but…” He swore and bent to look at her belly as she ate. He speared another piece of meat and tossed it high so she had to leap to get it, baring her silver-white underside. “If I didn’t know better...” he muttered.

Hermione stepped out from behind him. “She’s gravid, isn’t she,” she said, a declaration more than a question. “Broody. About to lay an egg.”

“That son of a…” Charlie trailed off. He took a protean galleon from his pocket and mashed it between his fingers. “We’ll see what Bogdan thinks. He’ll be on his way. But she certainly looks -- “ He couldn’t yet bring himself to say it.

“Do you think it’s the Iron-belly?” Hermione asked. “Could he have been the one to get her to produce an egg, and maybe fertilize it?”

Charlie let out a long breath. “I hope not. The pair of them wouldn’t be a good cross. They’re similar in colour and scale texture but that’s no sign of compatibility. Their size difference, on the other hand -- it’s untenable. Dangerous, especially when the opal-eye is the one who has to carry the egg.”

Bogdan was racing into the paddock, coming in too hot, setting Ela clambering against the fence line again. He skidded to a slower pace and came to stand with Charlie, clearly worried. They spoke quietly to each other before Bogdan went running back over the rise.

“What does he think?” Hermione asked. “Are we right?”

Charlie was grave humming and nodding. “He’s gone to get the test potions. They’ll tell us if there’s an egg and the variety of the father. She’s the only opal-eye here, so it’s going to be a mixed-breed, whatever it is. Hang it, Ela.”

Bogdan returned with two buckets sloshing with potions. He dropped more mutton into each of them and stirred. When the meat had taken on all of the bright green colour of the first potion, he tossed it onto the paddock, just as Charlie had done. The dragon nudged it once with her snout before flouncing away from it.

Charlie swore again. “Right. Looks like we’re doing this the hard way.” He took up the feeding pole, and used his wand to carve a slit in the paddock’s wards.

Bogdan muttered something to himself that might have been a prayer. He held up a pair of gloves, but Charlie waved them away as he stepped into the dragon’s habitat, leaving the small slit he’d passed through open behind him.

Ela the dragon came bounding toward him. Hermione bit back a scream, but the dragon pulled up short of him. Charlie stood still, his empty hand extended, speaking to her not in the language of her English captors, but in the low, rolling Romanian she associated with her new life here. It seemed to be going well but then the dragon puffed jets of smoke out her nose.

Bogdan called out a warning. His wand was drawn and so was Hermione’s, both of them stepping closer to the opening in the wards. The air was rank with sulfur and waving with heat. 

Charlie went on, spearing the potion-soaked meat and slowly lifting it towards the dragon’s mouth. She vented more smoke but didn’t turn away. Charlie kept up his low, gentle talk, and with his free hand, he stroked the end of her nose. Her jaws cracked open and he eased the meat into her mouth, leaving his hand on her snout until she ate all of it.

Bogdan sprinted around the fence to see the dragon’s abdomen. It was now lit with green light, and through it, they could see the outline of an egg. No one overreacted, everyone calm, quiet with worry.

Charlie called for the second dose of potioned meat, the purple one. Bogdan was transfixed by the sight of the egg, so Hermione fished it out of the bucket herself, staining her hands. Charlie speared it from where she had rolled it onto the grass, and returned to Ela to coax her to eat it. She was less inclined to cooperate than ever, her head tossing and smoking. But she was quicker to let Charlie touch her the second time, and eventually, the potioned meat was gone.

Charlie backed away while the magic was still working in her gut. He didn’t turn his back on the dragon, kept his eyes focused on her as he felt blindly for the opening in the wards. Hermione couldn’t bear it, and she thrust her hands in after him to tug him out. The sudden movement made the dragon lunge after him, but he had got clear of the enclosure and Hermione had zipped it shut with her wand before the dragon closed the distance. 

Charlie was drenched in sweat, standing in Hermione’s arms watching the green light on the dragon’s belly darken into a steely, luminous grey. “You’re right, Hermione,” he said. “She was definitely off with the Iron-belly.”

\----------------------------

The three of them left the paddock to go back to the courtyard. Bogdan went off to let everyone else know there would be a meeting later that night. Charlie was exhausted, his blood full of stress hormones, all his free energy burned away. "Go get some rest, Hermione," he said. "It's going to take me until dinner to wash up. You may as well get yourself settled in during that time."

"Right," she said. "But tell me the best way to get this off my hands."

Charlie gasped at the sight of her purple-stained skin. "You touched it? Without gloves or a pole?"

"Of course I did. We had to get you out of there. There was no time to be ginger about it." She flicked a glance at his hair. "Sorry."

He took one of her purple hands in his and led her to his building. "I suppose it's not like I wasn't warned you were prone to heroics," he said. "Let's see what we can do with you."

The small stone building seemed to contain nothing but Charlie's personal quarters. It was neat enough, but not at all decorated. Once inside he kicked off his boots and whipped the cap from his head, shaking out his hair, raking his fingers through it with one hand while pulling the end of the tie that unbound his apron. He sent both of these articles flying to rest on hooks beside the door. The relief of getting out of the hot clothing seemed to overcome him and he was tugging the tails of his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers and reaching for the buttons of his shirt.

He was standing in the centre of the room in trousers and a soaked vest that may have at one time been white, looking like he was about to peel it off too, when Hermione cleared her throat and said, "I'll fetch you a towel, shall I?" She wouldn't look at him, but scanned the rest of the room, looking for a cupboard to hide her face in, looking for towels.

Charlie jumped. "Oh," he said. "No, I'll just -- sorry. Never did get used to having girls in the house."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Girls?"

"Ladies," Charlie hurried to correct himself. "Women. Witches."

"That will do," she said. "Now if you don't want a towel, can we please clean my hands?"

Charlie shook himself. "Right. Right." He went into the bathroom and returned with a wide, flat jar. He motioned for Hermione to sit on the bed behind her as he kicked a stool across the floor to sit in front of her. "Here, we'll rub this on and let it sit while I'm in the shower. That should take care of the stain." With that he scooped out a handful of what looked and felt and smelled like lard and smeared it over both her hands, holding them between his own, his palms and fingers sliding and gliding over hers.

Hermione fought back a shiver, willing herself to concentrate on the greasy ickiness of the balm. "What is this muck?"

Charlie hushed her. "I have no idea. Marius's mother makes it herself and it fixes everything. Don't let her hear you complaining about it or she might cut off our supplies of it."

"I thought I was the only witch here."

He raised an eyebrow, the sliding motion of his hands turning into kneading. "Are you disappointed about having to share all of us with a one hundred year old woman?"

"I'm not sharing anyone with anyone," she said, trying to sound indignant. To sound anything but like she was about to moan with contentment at Charlie's care for her hands.

"Not sharing. Well, that's good to hear," Charlie said. "There, I think that's properly rubbed in. Now all you have to do, is wait."

He was standing up, heading back to the bathroom, wiping his hands on his filthy vest and pulling it up and over his head before he had quite finished kicking the door closed, giving Hermione full view of his spectacular back for one flashing instant. By the time she heard the water turn on, Hermione had slumped sideways on his bed. Charlie Weasley -- kind, brave, compassionate, smart, curious, fit as anything, rolling those Romanian Rs. She was absolutely doomed.

But how could she be, when his littlest brother was Ron, the man she had given up everything for only to have him betray and humiliate her? Jumping Charlie in his own bed when he stepped out of that bathroom would drag her right back to the emotional orbit she'd been locked in since she was twelve -- to the Burrow, to little pining Hermione wishing she was a Weasley at any cost. Pulling away from them had been excruciating. And if she let herself, Charlie could coax her to abandon all the progress she'd made, like a female dragon getting her snout rubbed and opening up to him.

Hermione stood up. "Sorry, Charlie," she said into the empty room. "Maybe someday, but not yet." She tiptoed to the door, the balm on her hands softening and melting, greasy drips falling to the floor. How was she going to turn the doorknob? She'd have to charm it open, an easy spell even without a wand. "Aloho -- "

"Hermione?"

It was Charlie, finished already, standing in the bathroom doorway in pajama bottoms and a dressing gown, toweling his hair. "Sorry to keep you so long. The balm should have worked by now. Come here," he said even as he approached her.

She raised one greasy hand. "Charlie," she said. "Charlie, please. Get the door for me and I'll leave you in peace."

He wasn't getting it. "It's no trouble," he said, snagging her hand in his towel and beginning to wipe the balm off of it, leaving the scent of his shampoo behind on her skin.

"Charlie," she said, almost pleading.

"You know, I've noticed something odd, about the way you talk to me," he said. "You say my name a lot -- like, a lot."

"I do?"

"Yes, Hermione. You do. And so I've been wondering," he said, finishing with one hand and taking up the other. "Is it about him? Do you say my name over and over to remind yourself that I'm not Ronnie. Like you're not over him?"

She blew out a long, pained breath. "I'm not in love with him anymore, if that's what you mean. He will always be a part of me, but Ronald is -- " She didn't know how to finished, not after Charlie had just caught her about to slink of our here in order to save face in front of Ron by not falling for his brother. She closed her eyes, gave her head one firm shake, and felt Charlie release her hand. She opened her eyes to examine her hands. He'd made them perfectly clean.

"Charlie," she said. "I say your name like an incantation. Like a spell that keeps conjuring you. Keeping you where I can see you. Because you -- as wonderful as you are -- you can't be real."

He said nothing, regarding her without meeting her eyes, like a careful dragonologist sensing a situation that might be dangerous, exercising caution when the stakes were high.

But he held the tension for a moment too long. Hermione sighed. "And the spell breaks."

She was leaving, reaching for the door when he closed his hand around her wrist. "Hermione," he said, turning her to face him again.

His finger combed through the hair over her ear. "Hermione."

His hand moved through the curls without snagging. "Hermione."

His palm moved to the back of her head, cradling her skull, pulling her forward, her lips brought to his. He spoke into her mouth, "Hermione."


	3. Three

Charlie Weasley stood inside his front door, his head bent, his nose touching Hermione Granger’s as she agonized over whether or not to leave him there, cross the courtyard, and go cry alone in a strange bunkhouse. But he held her by one wrist and the back of her head, pulling her up and into the balmy, fragrant warmth around his freshly showered self, his hair still dark and damp. His lips were soft but rimmed with rough red stubble as they spoke her name against her mouth.

“Hermione.”

Her heart was crashing inside her, her skin electrified, everything in her straining toward him. Still, she held back, waiting for him this time, answering with nothing more than a word, her incantation.

“Charlie.”

As her mouth opened to speak it, he was there, kissing her. It was impossible not to, even for Charlie, a man who may have never deliberately made a first move on a witch before, no matter how seduced she might have felt. His name, only half-spoken in her throat became a high, sweet sigh, calling him closer. He released her wrist just to take her by the waist instead. 

He had no plan, hardly a thought, but knew he didn’t want her to leave. They needed to move away from the door. He stepped backward, pulling her against him as they went, their mouths still connected. She followed without resistance, her eyes closed, mouth open, her hands gripping his shoulders. Even through the thick, soft layer of his dressing gown, his shoulders felt massive, hard, too big from her hands to cover completely. He felt more like Viktor Krum than Ronald Weasley beneath her hands. But of course he was neither. He was Charlie, something like the best of both of them, only just himself.

Doomed -- she was doomed to fall for him.

Then all at once she was falling. In their blind walk backwards, she had stepped in a spot of the greasy balm that had dripped from her hands and onto the smooth wooden floor. She lost her footing and grabbed at Charlie’s clothes, pulling his dressing gown completely off one shoulder. He scrambled to keep her upright, but as he adjusted his footing, he stepped into the low stool he had left in front of the bed while applying the balm to her hands. He was tripping as well, breaking the kiss and bracing for impact as they fell onto the bed.

They landed on their sides, facing each other on the soft mattress. Neither of them spoke. Hermione’s hand had moved from Charlie’s shoulder to the crook of his elbow as she’d pulled at his dressing gown. She moved her head, still cradled in Charlie’s palm, to look at her hand on his freckled, brown arm. With her eyes, she followed a line up to his shoulder and down to his bare chest before sucking in a breath and forcing her stare back to his face.

He was watching her with that alluring curiosity of his, and though she knew he wasn’t sure what to do with her, she also knew she would accept whatever he offered, here in his bed. She sensed the quick rise and fall of her own chest between them. Self-conscious, she tipped slightly away from him, onto her back. 

He followed, hovering over her, not covering up his exposed skin. She bit back his name, aching to say it again, but aware it might sound too much like begging. And she would not beg anyone for anything. Not even him.

He was still exploring, though not quite scientifically. He lowered his face to hers, grazing her cheek with his lips. She dragged her fingertips from his elbow, to his shoulder, up his throat and to his jaw, delicate pressure keeping him close. 

He decided, and trailed his lips toward her mouth --

And then the door crashed open. There was a rush of cold evening mountain air and a barrage of high, frantic shouting. Charlie’s posture snapped to attention, his dressing gown whipped back in place, both of his feet on the floor. In the doorway stood a tiny, grisled woman, waving her arms and ranting. Her face and limbs were skeletally thin, her head bound with a red and blue kerchief. 

Hermione didn’t understand the woman’s language, but she could tell she was using it to shame and reprimand them for being in bed together. Some things need no translation.

Charlie had placed himself to keep the woman from seeing Hermione completely, shielding her from any embarrassment she might be feeling. When he could, he stood up, nodding and saying the same five or six words over and over again in gentle, agreeable tones, walking towards the woman, taking her hands and stacking them between his, nodding furiously, almost bowing. Finally, she let him turn her out the door. Something he’d done had placated her, though Hermione had no idea what.

“I’d better go,” she said as Charlie closed the door behind the old witch and leaned his back against it.

He nodded, his eyes closed, lips still parted, chest heaving. “Yeah.”

“What exactly was she yelling about?” Hermione asked as she rose from the bed. “That was Marius’s mother, I assume.”

He nodded “Yes, that’s her. As for what she was on about. I don’t know. Your chastity, I reckon? We’ve never had a woman as a guest here, so I wasn’t prepared for what Doamna Marius might think of you -- visiting my quarters.”

For many reasons, Hermione frowned. “You don’t understand her?”

“No. This is a border region and not everyone speaks Romanian here. Doamna Marius among them.” He was fidgeting, fanning his fingers through his damp hair. “And no, that’s not her name. It makes no sense, but that’s what they call her all the same -- like her real name is unspeakable, or something.”

He was joking, but Hermione didn’t laugh. “Whoever she is, she’s not speaking Romanian?”

“No, she’s not,” Charlie confirmed. “She speaks nothing but Hungarian. I can handle Romanian. It’s like the craziest French ever, but not impossible for me to pick up. But Hungarian -- they say only children can learn Hungarian. It didn’t take me long to give it up.”

Hermione hummed. “Well, I still feel like we owe it to her to find out what she said to us. It might be important. Didn’t you say this place was originally built as a convent? What if there’s some sort of ancient curse on people who try to kiss each other here?”

This time she was joking, but Charlie didn’t laugh. He shifted on his feet and said, “If I ask Marius to interpret that scene for me, then I’ll have to tell him -- and he’ll know that we were…”

She scoffed. “I’m not stupid, Charlie. No one here is. I can tell they already suspect.”

Charlie looked at his feet without answering. Hermione felt her high, pink colour blanching away. This was a mistake. He had made a mistake and didn’t want anyone to know what he’d done with her, minor as it might seem to other people. 

She let out her breath in a quick huff, “Right.” She took one quick step toward the door, and he was in front of her again, his hands on her arms, holding her in place.

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks of -- this,” he said. “Not even my own family. You know I’m a bit notorious in my family for doing whatever I like, especially since prodigal Percy stopped sending his Christmas jumpers back.”

She smirked and leaned ever so slightly against him as he explained himself.

“But I do want to make sure this thing has the space it needs to -- to sort itself out,” Charlie went on. “I don’t want to start something with you and then cram it between everyone’s expectations and opinions, like a dragon in a cage in a black market carnival. It’s too precious, too marvelous.” 

He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers, “I can’t get this wrong. And as a perfectionist, I don’t want anyone else touching it. I know you understand that, Hermione. I’ll tolerate no interference. Not even Doamna Marius’s iron-fisted grip on this odd little mountain settlement.”

She turned her face until her closed mouth was pressed against his fingers. In the dim light coming through the window from where the street lamps had been lit outside, she blinked her brown eyes at him.

He smudged her lips with his thumb. After so little time, how was it that there was nearly nothing he wouldn’t do for her? It was mad infatuation, and he knew enough to know it had to be tempered, slowed, before it consumed anything with the potential to last. Still, he agreed. “Alright, then. I’ll ask Marius what she said. But only so we can avoid more of her most aggravating interference in the future. After dinner and the meeting, I’ll find out what I agreed to just now.”

Hermione stood back. “Agreed to?”

Charlie dropped his hand from her face, nodding. “Yeah. I answered her with the only Hungarian I know: ‘I’m sorry, yes, thank you.’ I said it over and over to get her to leave.”

“I’m sorry, yes, thank you,” Hermione repeated.

“It’s the best I could do,” Charlie argued. “I literally can’t say anything else to her. Well, I suppose I could have used the rest of my Hungarian vocabulary. Numbers up to ten, can you repeat that, careful, dragon, very big dragon, angry dragon -- “

She was laughing. “Right then. Get dressed, Weasley. I’ll see you at dinner, and then we’ll talk about -- about us as sensible adults. But with you properly clothed and nowhere near your bed.”

\---------------------------------

At the dragon sanctuary, dinner was served in a mess hall with an ambiance not unlike the Great Hall at Hogwarts: stone walls and floors, firelight from sconces burning along the walls and overhead, long wooden tables lined with benches. The food was mostly turnips and sausages which, Hermione noted as she glanced around the room and found she was indeed the only woman there besides Doamna Marius, was fitting.

From the bits of interpretation she got from Charlie, she could tell that everyone was talking about Gabriela, the opal-eye dragon rescued from Gringott’s and now gravid by the Ukrainian iron-belly. Charlie was making sure to tell everyone that Hermione had led Ela’s liberation from the bank, news met with noisy gasps of awe and a few heartfelt bows. No one needed to translate those for her either.

Among the dragonologists and their assistants, there was talk of concern for the opal-eye’s health, and a bit of admiration for the iron-belly for wearing down her unreceptiveness. In more hushed tones, there was speculation about who had tampered with the wards between their enclosures to bring them into contact with each other. 

Yes, dragons are wily and it wasn’t entirely impossible for the randy Iron-belly to have broken them down himself, but it was unlikely. Far more plausible was the theory that one of the wizards had done it. Or, Bogdan whispered only to Charlie, that old Doamna Marius had done it herself. Marius himself was a squib, educated in a Muggle university in economics and finance, working here to do the math to keep international markets supplied with legal dragon goods to take the teeth out of the black market. He lived here with his mother because their family had always lived here. Whatever she set her mind to, there was nothing magical Marius could do to stop her. 

Bogdan’s fear of old Doamna Marius verged on superstitious. It was the same for most of the men at the sanctuary. This was why Bogdan sat close to Charlie, trying to convince him to be the one to raise the possibility of her tampering with the wards at the meeting. None of the local people would be so foolhardy, but Weasley did what he wanted around here and seemed to get away with it most of the time, his missteps waved off as foreigner ignorance and insolence. Still, Charlie groaned and pulled at his own hair at the suggestion. Eventually, he agreed to do it, but not until after everyone had their fill of sausages.

The food was mostly cleared away, and the wizards were settled back in their chairs, sipping at their tea, when Doamna Marius herself climbed rather nimbly onto a chair at the head of the room. She raised her arms to call for quiet, and began to speak in a language only a handful of those listening could understand. 

At first, everyone listened with polite attention, whether they understood her or not. Before long there were a few guffaws of laughter from the Hungarian speakers in the room. They began whispering to their tablemates and as they did, Doamna Marius, still speaking as if nothing had changed, was stepping off the table, almost flying, drifting toward where Hermione sat next to Charlie.

Marius was on his feet, as if to head his mother off, arguing in a whisper in Hungarian as she ignored him, her hand raised to hide his face from hers. The men from the other tables were following after her as she moved past them, gathering in a crowd around Charlie’s table. 

When she was close enough, Doamna Marius clasped Hermione by the hand. A jolt ran the length of Hermione’s arm as the old witch closed her fingers around hers. The Hungarian speakers were mouthing to her over Domna Marius’s shoulder, waving their hands as if trying to hail cabs. Beside her, Marius was whispering frantically in Charlie’s ear in Romanian. And while Charlie listened, eyes wide, Doamna Marius spoke a single sentence in a clear, ringing voice as she stood eye to eye with Hermione. 

Hermoine could tell the old witch was addressing her, demanding an answer for something. She shook her head, smiling apologetically. Doamna Marius stood a little taller, repeating herself, louder and slower, as if it helped. Hermione had studied foreign languages before, and one of her strategies for understanding unfamiliar foreign speech had always been to repeat back what she had just heard the other speaker say. It bought her time, and helped her internalize the words to find something familiar in them. 

So that is what she did. She repeated back to Doamna Marius the last two Hungarian syllables she had said. 

A cheer went up from the crowd. Doamna Marius smiled almost sweetly, and tapped the top of Hermione’s hand with her wand in parting. She let go, and reached for Charlie. As he let her take his hand, Charlie's face was paler than Hermione had ever seen it, every freckle starkly visible. The old witch was chattering at him now. She ended by asking him a question as well, but Hermiome couldn’t be sure if it was different from what she’d been asked. 

Hermione’s mind was working, clicking and ticking through possibilities, intent on decoding this strange exchange. It must be some kind of mortification spell, something to reverse whatever negative influence they’d brought to the sanctuary with a bit of snogging and an accidental trip into bed. 

Fine then, Hermione thought. Have your ridiculous, ancient ceremony. Go on and try to embarrass us in front of everyone, if it will make you feel better. What does it matter?

Hermione watched bemused as Charlie swallowed hard enough for his entire head to bob and said the same words she had said to Doamna Marius. He hadn’t quite finished when the entire room was ringing with cheers and singing. Doamna Marius held him a moment longer, tapping his hand with her wand. A blue spiral of light sprung up from it, bending as it reached the ceiling, splitting into dozens of fine, falling strands, showering the men below. 

They turned in the falling sparks, as if celebrating long-awaited rain. Their cheering reached a crescendo and Charlie was lifted onto their shoulders and carried around the room, the crowd bouncing and singing beneath him. 

They pawed at Hermione as if to do the same with her, but Doamna Marius batted their hands away. But she did squeeze Hermione’s face between her gnarled hands, like the boughs of an enchanted willow bush, and kissed her wetly on each cheek.

The men were letting Charlie stand on his own feet again, and the crowd was surging from behind Hermione, pushing her toward the door of the mess hall. The mass of people jammed themselves through the door and outside into the cool night. They bore her all the way across the courtyard and through another door. It slammed shut with Hermione on one side, and the singing, laughing, hooting voices on the other. They were fading away, leaving her behind the door.

The room she’d been shut in was dark, and she was reaching for her wand as she heard Charlie cast a Lumos spell from somewhere closeby. In the light, she saw they were back in the small building where he lived. He tended the lamps, and once the room was lit with a warm orange glow, he sat down heavily at a small table.

“Well,” he began. “My plan to keep anyone else from interfering between you and me could not have failed any more spectacularly than it has.”

She sighed and stepped further into the room. “Oh, come on, Charlie. Yes, that was embarrassing. But at least it’s over. The old crone seemed satisfied. And she doesn’t seem to mind us spending time alone together anymore.”

Charlie looked up from where he’d been staring at the tabletop, lifting his head from between his hands. “Hermione, you don’t -- “ He broke off, laughing mirthlessly. “I am so sorry. It was the language barrier at first, but then -- I panicked, froze. Even after Marius -- he explained, but by then you’d already said “yes” -- “

“Is that what I said?”

“It was,” he was nodding, wiping sweaty palms on his thighs. “And Doamna Marius took it as if you meant it. You pronounced it so nicely, confidently, as if you knew. And -- and everyone was waiting and I couldn’t very well show you up by saying ‘no’ in front of all of them and so -- now -- “

“Now what, Charlie?” she said, her voice rising. “What did I say ‘yes’ to?”

He was standing up, pacing as he spoke, quickly, as if thinking aloud. “I’m sure we can sort it out later. You can’t enter into an agreement without understanding it. That can’t be right. Not even in the Carpathians.”

“What agreement?”

“And what kind of authority does Doamna Marius actually have? It might be good for one outpost in the Carpathians, but anywhere else, certainly back home we wouldn’t be considered -- “

“Charlie,” Hermione said, almost shouting as she stood in front of him, her hands braced against his shoulders to stop his pacing. 

He wouldn’t look at her, and seemed hardly able to feel her hands on him. “But on the bright side, I think it’s pretty clear now who sneaked into the opal-eye’s enclosure and got her hooked up with the Iron-belly. Just another bit of life-changing, fate-altering, relationship meddling from a not-at-all harmless old woman of the mountain.”

Hermione threw her hands up. “What have the dragons got to do with what happened in the mess hall just now? Clearly I’ve missed something.”

Charlie took in a huge breath, as if he was about to blow fire to rival all the dragons sleeping in the woods over the rise. Instead, he blew it slowly out his nose as he took both her hands in his. “You know I fancy you, Hermione. But even more than that, I like you. So much. Even so, you have to believe this is no trick of mine. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Certainly not like it did tonight. And whatever you decide to do about it, I’ll support you completely. If you want me to send you back to London tonight and never see me again -- I will hate that, but I will do that.“

She stepped into him, her face upturned, her hands still held in his. “Tell me, Charlie. Are we vampires now? Did we sell our souls to an up-and-coming Dark Lord?”

He stepped back, releasing her hands. “We did sell our souls. We sold them to each other. Hermione, you and I are married.”


	4. Four

In his quarters at the dragon sanctuary, Charlie Weasley stepped back, releasing Hermione’s hands. “We did sell our souls,” he told her. “We sold them to each other. Hermione, you and I are married.”

Her eyes might have widened, her brows might have lifted, but her chief reaction was to laugh. 

“No. No, we’re not.” She kept laughing even when Charlie didn’t join in. “It can’t happen like that, Charlie. I repeat something in a language I know nothing about to a person who knows nothing about me and then I’m married? No. We didn’t apply for a license, no one in particular stood up as a witness. We didn’t even have to swear we weren’t brother and sister first. The old witch can’t just -- I mean -- she can’t.”

“Well, she has done.” Charlie threw his hands up. “Welcome to Carpathian mountains wizarding society.” His hands came to rest on the top of his head as he paced in a circle. “Like I said, I’m almost sure it means nothing outside this region, but -- try telling them that.”

Hermione spun away from him. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. You may all be terrified of that Baba Yaga, that Doamna Marius, but I am not. I’m something of a formidable witch myself, you know.” She had reached the door and was tugging hard at it. “If we were strangers, I might actually impress you.”

Charlie crossed the floor to stand beside her as she hurled Alohomora spells at his door. “Of course I’m impressed with you,” he said. “Everyone here knows you broke the opal-eye out of Gringott’s. There isn’t anyone, even way out here, who isn’t impressed with you.”

She ignored the compliment, refusing to stop working on the door, defiant at being pushed around and penned up and married off without her consent.

“Look,” Charlie said. “Marius managed to tell me that when Doamna Marius came in here after work today, the first thing she did was indeed to scream at me for having a woman in my bed. And I answered, not inappropriately, though accidentally, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Hermione gave up on opening the door and switched to trying to charm it to knock itself down instead. Still nothing.

Charlie went on. “And then, she demanded to know whether I intended to marry you, and I replied with the next Hungarian word i know, ‘yes.’”

Hermione paused in her spell casting, uttering a groan. “And don’t tell me, Charlie. She then offered to marry us after dinner, to which you blissfully, ignorantly replied, ‘thank you,’ and now we’re locked in here for our honeymoon. Is that it?”

He slouched against the wall beside the door. “Yes. It turns out I agreed to it not once, but twice. And it’s -- ” 

He interrupted himself, sniffing and stepping back, alarmed to find the wood of the door was now smoking as Hermione continued to fire spells at it. “For stars’ sake, Hermione, they’ve charmed all the exits shut until morning and there’s nothing much we can do about it. Is being stuck in here for a few hours really worse than burning ourselves alive?”

He was right. She stopped her magical attack on the door, but gave it one final parting kick, yelping as she smashed her toe harder than she knew she could against the old oak boards. Charlie reached out to brace her as she doubled over, one arm around her shoulders, his other hand holding her elbow.

“I’m alright,” she said, still hissing from the pain. She moved to step away from him, toward a chair, but he was turning her around, holding her against his chest. The furious edge left her posture, and she slumped against him, letting him hold her up along his frame. “What do we do now, Charlie? How can we let this relationship sort itself out when we’ve been meddled with like this?”

He answered with a sympathetic groan and a slight swaying, side to side, almost like a dance.

She went on. “We were supposed to talk about us tonight, like a pair of reasonable, sensible adults in complete control of our own lives, away from your bed and with you fully clothed.”

He snickered into the top of her head. “I promise I’ll stay clothed. Can’t do a thing about the rest of it, I’m afraid.”

She lifted her face from his chest. “My bag. If they’ve really locked us in here for the night, then I don’t have my bag or any of my things.”

Charlie could see how she was coping. She was reaching for the practical, taking command of their small environment, taking stock of it, solving what problems she could to regain some control. She let go of him to inspect the counter and sink that served as his tiny kitchen. “Do you have spoons in here? I could transform one into a toothbrush for the night. Yes, here. This will do. And I should be able to survive one night without my moisturizer -- “

“I should hope so, at age twenty-two.”

“And as for sleeping, I’ll engorgio that cushion from the chair and sleep on the floor,” she said.

He scoffed. “You will not.”

“Charlie -- “

“I’ll sleep on the floor. You take the bed. Can you imagine what my mother would say if she knew I made a guest, a lady, a visiting officer of the Ministry sleep on the floor? No, I’m not arguing about it,” he said. “And, I’m not going to let you sleep in your street clothes either.”

“If you knew how many times, and in what sorts of places I have slept in my street clothes -- “ 

“I can well imagine,” he said. “And unlike some Weasleys, I’ll have no more of it. Let me get you something perfectly modest and decent to change into for sleeping.”

The room was quiet but for the sound of Charlie rummaging through his chest of drawers, reaching for what was tucked in the back, his smaller clothes from when he was living here just out of school.

“He was good to me, from time to time,” Hermione said. “Ron, that is. The night of Bill’s wedding, when we ran to London and slept at the abandoned old Grimmauld Place, Ron wouldn’t let me sleep on the floor either.”

Charlie sighed, not turning around. “You don’t have to convince me he’s a good, loveable person. I’ve loved him since before he was born. I still do and always will. But it was hard not to be angry at him when he left you. It was hard for everyone, and we’re still working it through. Bill felt worst of all, I think. Blames himself for having a part in it. He let mademoiselle come stay with them knowing Ron is a full-on arse when it comes to Veela ancestry. What he didn’t count on was her actually taking whatever attention Ron paid her seriously, but -- “

“Enough,” Hermione said. “Of course I don’t want someone who doesn’t wholeheartedly want me too. Ronald and I -- it was a near miss, a lucky break. He can have his Veela. He’d better have her. I’ll wait for someone who wouldn’t leave me for any magic.”

“Someone who smells like Amortentia itself?” Charlie suggested, turning to face her, a neat pile of clothing in his arms. He looked in time to see her defiant expression fall into sadness again.

“No, actually. I -- Ron, he -- ” Her chin was quivering.

Charlie tossed the clothing on the bed and rushed to take her in his arms again. He was swearing under his breath as he gathered her up and held her tight. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry again,” he was saying. “I forgot they brought Slughorn back for your year. He would have been showing off Amortentia for you, and when you were sixteen it would have smelled like -- of course -- hang it, I’m sorry, Hermione.”

She made a sound somewhere between a cough and a rather teary laugh. “It’s alright. Amortentia’s smell changes over the lifecycle. I know that.”

“Still, how awful it must have been for you,” Charlie said. “I know well what Ron can smell like. Getting a nose full of that out of Amortentia -- I can see how you’re traumatized by it now.”

She couldn’t help but laugh quietly as she beat one fist weakly against his chest, grateful for the teasing. She lifted her chin and asked him, “So what did your Amortentia smell like when you were sixteen? Some sweaty quidditch hussy?”

Charlie scoffed. “No. The same smell I imagine it would have now: brimstone and fir trees, and maybe,” he dipped his head to inhale deeply against her throat, “what is that? Ink?”

She swatted at him again, her laughter trailing into a sigh. “I’m sorry, Charlie, that sorting ourselves out means sorting your brother as well.”

He dropped his forehead to touch hers. “It’s not like I didn’t expect it. And if I didn’t think it was worth it, I wouldn’t have bothered. But I have.”

“You’ve got no choice, what with that lot having their way.” She jerked her head toward the window, where they could hear voices outside again.

Charlie let go of her. “You go get changed, I’ll put the kettle on. We may as well be comfortable in here.”

She went to the bed to collect the clothes he’d found for her: a pair of plain grey track pants, hopelessly oversized, and a shirt in a familiar red. She beamed at the sight of it. “Your Gryffindor practice quidditch T-shirt, is it?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s smaller than my other ones, left over from when I was a skinny schoolboy.”

She unfolded it to read the writing on the back. She had been wrong about him playing as a chaser. The patch on the sleeve confirmed that he was a seeker, like Ginny and Harry and, she winced, like Malfoy. “It’s got your name on it. And you still want me to wear it?”

“Of course.”

“C Weasley? Why did they need to include your first initial when Bill and Percy weren’t on the team?”

He cleared his throat and answered in a mumble. “It’s not C for Charlie.”

Hermione pursed her lips and looked at the writing again. Not C for Charlie, not C for chaser. It was C for… “Captain,” she said aloud.

Stars help her.

Charlie’s voice came back over his shoulder again. “If you’d rather wear something else, I’m sure I can find -- “

“No, no,” she said as she began to close the bathroom door. “This will do nicely.”

When she came out again, lost in Charlie’s clothes, her teeth freshly cleaned, she found him standing over the bed he’d made for himself on the floor. He was dressed in pajamas bottoms and a clean white vest, a cup of hot tea in each hand and peering anxiously at the window.

“What is it?” Hermione asked, taking her tea from him.

He hushed her just as the sharp cracking sound of a handful of pebbles clattered at the window. There was chanting outside, the loud but muffled Romanian of a group of men who sounded all too happy to have a reason to be drinking and celebrating in the middle of a work week.

“They’re demanding we turn the lights out,” Charlie said. “They’re watching the building and think it’s high time we -- consum -- uh -- went to -- erm -- called it a night.”

There was nothing for Hermione to do but laugh. “Right. We can talk in the dark just as well as the light anyway. Go ahead.”

He took his wand from his pocket to douse the lights, but paused. He raised his teacup, smirking as he clinked it delicately against Hermione’s. “Happy anniversary, darling,” he said.

She raised hers in turn and they both sipped a toast, careful not to burn themselves.

\----------------------

Hermione’s eyes had adjusted to the low light in Charlie’s darkened room. From where she lay, pressed as close to the edge of the bed as she could get, she looked down at the transformed cushion he had made into a mattress for himself, his pale face visible in the dim moonlight.

“I want to know,” she said, curling into a ball. “When was the first time you noticed me. I was at the Quidditch World Cup with all of you but I don’t think you realized I wasn’t just part of the crowd.”

Charlie laughed and covered his eyes with one hand. “Yes. I have no memory of you being there. Nothing. Though, I can’t imagine you were too interested in me either.”

Hermione scoffed. “Of course I was. I was a full Weasley fan-girl by then. Your family was my hobby, my collection. And up until then, you’d been the missing piece. No, it was a great moment for me, meeting the complete set, whether you knew it or not.”

He laughed again, covering his eyes with both his hands, and she wondered for a moment if perhaps she should be embarrassed to have admitted all this.

“Right. The first time I took notice of you was at Bill’s wedding,” he said, dropping his hands for his eyes.

“When I interrupted your haircut?”

“Well, yes. There was that. But then, during the ceremony, you were totally checking me out. It was hard to miss.”

She uncurled from her fetal posture. “I was not!”

“Yeah, you were.”

She lay sputtering on the edge of the bed. “I had to look at something during the service. It doesn’t mean I -- “ She reached out and slapped at his arm as he continued to laugh. “Oh, stop it, Charlie. Stop laughing at poor teenaged me. Listen to you. You are awful, Charles Prewett Weasley.”

In flash, the laughter stopped. Charlie’s hand was on her wrist, pulling her over the edge of the bed and into the short fall onto his mattress. She felt like a caught snitch, plucked from where she was to come quickly and effortlessly to him. She was on her back, lying next to him, looking at his face as he propped himself on his elbow, keeping hold of her wrist with his opposite hand.

“You know my middle name?” His voice was low, rumbling with vibrations she could feel on her arm against his chest.

She swallowed. “Of course I do. Haven’t you been listening? Your family was my teenaged hobby. I know all of your brothers’ names. There’s William Arthur, Percival Ignatius, Fredericton Gideon, George Fabian, and of course Ro -- “

Charlie stopped her mouth with a kiss, the first one between them since Doamna Marius had married them to each other. It was different. It wasn’t that the two other kisses she’d shared with Charlie hadn’t been thrilling. But this -- it was scorching, electrified, wild. Still gripping her wrist, he moved to hold it against the mattress, their hands beside her head. The rest of him came to rest on top of her. She arched upward to meet him, her free hand finding his waist, her fingers curving over the hem of his vest. She shifted her knees to fit on either side of his legs and he groaned as he tore his mouth away from hers.

She thought he might speak but he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. She spoke instead. “Charles -- Prewett -- Weasley,” she said, pressing soft, wet kisses to his throat between each name. “Yes, that’s the only one of those names I can remember right now.”

Charlie cleared his throat and let go of her wrist, using the hand that had held it to brush her hair from her forehead. “We’ve got a problem. With my name,” he said. “After what you said -- about conjuring me with it -- it does things to me, when you say my name. I go all wild.”

Her mouth curved into a wicked smile. “Charlie, you can’t fetishize your own name.”

“I know, but -- “

“How will you live like that?”

He dropped his forehead on the mattress, next to her ear. “I don’t know. I was thinking of asking you to call me by one of my other names but -- well, you just proved that won’t work either. It’s just as bad, if not worse.”

She giggled beneath him. “Is it when anyone says your name, or just -- “

“Just you,” he said. “And here I don’t even know your middle name.”

She sighed. “It’s Jean. Just Jean.”

He hummed, considering it before he seemed to decide that if he couldn’t cure himself, at least he could strike her with the same affliction. Charlie closed in on her neck, alternating words and kisses, just as she’d done to him. “Hermione -- Jean -- Granger -- “ He paused, drew in a deep breath, and finished with one last name of hers, a new one. He whispered it against her throat.

“Weasley.”

Her hands were on either side of his head, pulling his mouth back to her. She was devouring him, mad frantic kissing, her fingers in his hair, her legs clamped around his waist. She was left gasping as he pulled his mouth away and tracked down her throat, his face pushing back the wide, oversized collar of his shirt she wore, descending to her sternum, his hands bracing either side of her ribcage. Her hands were back at the hem of vest, pulling it up, baring his stomach. She dragged her knuckles against his skin as she pulled it all the way to his arms, about to slide it free of them so she could have all of his torso, and then -- 

“Wait,” Charlie said, pushing himself off her, sitting up in the dark, his vest falling back into place. “Please -- just wait.”

She listened to his heavy breathing in the darkness, taking a moment to catch her own before smoothing her shirt and sitting up next to him. She hung her head. “I’m sorry. I was about to break our promise about leaving you fully clothed. It’s just that it -- it felt right, natural.”

Through the darkness, she saw him nod. “It did. It was. Don’t be sorry. But -- “ He took her hand in his. “We’re not dragons acting on instinct. We’re people who have to think and choose -- “

She groaned. What was happening to her? She loved thinking. How could she forget and let herself go so feral?

Charlie had a theory. “That ceremony in the mess hall tonight -- the wedding, I guess it was -- it happened through Doamna Marius’s magic. Old magic. Ancient and a bit wild. And for that kind of spell, consummation tends to be extremely significant.”

She sat back. “So you’re saying, if we wanted to get out of this -- arrangement -- it might be more difficult if we’d already consummated it. And therefore we shouldn’t...”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, squeezing her hand. “Listen to yourself, Hermione. You just called it an arrangement. You can’t even say the word ‘marriage’ in front of me. And I think that’s a way of telling us both you’re still not sure about it, and about me. So I’d like you to take a little more time, make a thoughtful, conscious choice before we make it any harder for you to undo this.”

“Harder for me to undo this?” she repeated. “What about you? Are you just lying here passive to Doamna Marius’s magic, waiting for me to decide what happens next? That doesn’t sound like Charlie Weasley to me.”

He blew out a breath. “I’m still going over it. I’m slow at decisions. Cautious.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

He raised their joined hands to his face, and kissed hers. “I definitely want you. That’s clear enough. But the rest is -- overwhelming. I want to be sure we’re not like dumb prats pushed into something by magical attraction instead of by choice." He didn't mention Ron and his Veela at this point, but he could have. "I want you to choose me, Hermione. But I only want you if you’ll always see me as -- how did you put it -- someone you wouldn’t leave for any magic,” he said.

She sighed. He was such a grownup. She both admired and despised it.

“Tomorrow, let’s get our opal-eye settled, and head off to the university in Oradea to research old Carpathian marriage rites. How's that sound?” he said.

“Or maybe we could find the nerve to speak to Doamna Marius ourselves,” she said.

Charlie shuddered but said. “Yes, perhaps there’s that too. Whatever we do, there is really no rush to work it out right this moment. There will be other nights. Maybe all of them.”

It was sweet enough, hopeful enough that Hermione was able to boost herself back into bed without being too cross or sad. She ruffled Charlie’s hair as she lay down. “Goodnight, you who must not be named.”

He gave a quiet laugh through his nose and lay down himself to watch the stars creep by the window until dawn.


	5. Chapter 5

Hermione awoke in her new husband’s, Charlie Weasley’s, bed to the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. His mattress on the floor next to her was empty, the blankets tangled in a knot like a statue he’d hurriedly sculpted in commemoration of last night’s restless sleep.

As for herself, Hermione had slept rather well. Frustrated or not, she had traveled from London to Bucharest to the Carpathians, helped administer a gravidity detection potion to a dragon, accidentally been married in a ceremony that was more like a brawl, unsuccessfully fought to escape a lock-up, mourned her a ex a little more, been on both sides of failed seductions, and done all of it in one day. She couldn’t help but be quite worn out.

It was still early enough in the spring for there to be frost in mountains in the morning, and the grills on the window next to the bed twinkled in the early sunlight, the only diamonds she’d ever seen as the newest Mrs. Weasley. She raised her arms above her head and stretched between Charlie’s sheets with a muffled squeal. The moment her spine curved with her stretch, it was back. Last night’s feelings -- the butterflies in her stomach were moving again. 

Through the closed bathroom door and the sound of streaming water, she heard Charlie clear his throat. Any moment now the water might shut off, and Charlie could appear, dewy in his dressing gown, just like yesterday, before dinner, when…

She sat up. It was best if she left. All her things were still in the deserted witches’ bunkhouse anyway. It was plenty of excuse to cross the courtyard and get ready for the day over there. She rose and tried the front door of Charlie’s place, the one that had been charmed shut all night, and it swung open as freely as it ever had on its heavy iron hinges. She jotted a note explaining where she’d gone and telling him she’d see him at breakfast in the mess hall. Without taking the time to cloak herself in a Disillusionment spell, she gathered yesterday’s clothes and crept away still wearing Charlie’s quidditch t-shirt.

Whatever happened, she was keeping that.

The witches’ bunkhouse was cold, as if there hadn’t been a fire in it for years. Frankly, cold, empty space was exactly what she needed. Hermione stood in the stream of the shower, wishing the water could be just a little warmer, trying to do what had been so difficult to do while lying under Charlie last night: think.

Thinking, as she well knew, was best begun by assembling what she already knew, and looking for gaps, finding the vacant spaces where what she needed to know ought to be. She’d been married to Charlie by an old Carpathian witch who, thanks to a language barrier that had done enough damage already, she could not question directly, without an interpreter. And with all the possible interpreters acting like they were scared of Doamna Marius, that route to finding anything out was closed -- for now.

The wedding had every indication of being a bizarre but not altogether implausible misunderstanding. But Hermione had seen enough conniving and machinations in her day to look at every misunderstanding with an eye for subterfuge. Had Doamna Marius truly misunderstood, or was there something about getting them married and locking them away together that served some other purpose? And what would it be? Charlie hadn’t been at the meeting about Ela’s egg last night. From the sounds of the crowd, it might not have happened yet. As far as they knew, no one had yet decided how best to care for the relatively little dragon carrying an enormous egg.

Charlie had said something the night before connecting their wedding to the breach in the wards that allowed the skittish opal-eye and the bully of an iron-belly to mate. He thought Doamna Marius had something to do with it, but how could she? Someone who’d lived at this settlement for a hundred years would understand better than anyone what a wildly dangerous risk it was to breed that particular pair of dragons. 

Though Ela might have become receptive to the iron-belly eventually, she was still in danger, carrying the egg of a mate that size. She could suffer a prolapse of her cloaca, the passage from her body that the egg would have to pass through as she laid it. An accident like that could be fatal. Though in the end, Hermione observed with darkest cynicism, whoever planned this situation would still get their hatchable egg whether Ela survived or not.

She turned off the water, immediately shivering with cold, drying her hair with her wand as quickly as she could and wrapping herself in the thin, dingy but clean towel she’d found in the bunkhouse cupboard. There must be something to be gained from the offspring of an opal-eye and iron-belly cross that made it worth the risk -- something that might yield a lot of money on the black market. But what did Doamna Marius want with money? If she never left the sanctuary, never went out to where money could be spent, what good would it be?

Hermione sighed and pawed through her bag for something to wear. If there was a mystery here, it might be a boring one, something about Doamna Marius helping her son, the squib with a Muggle education in finance, get his hands on pricey dragon contraband. Hermione wouldn’t even have begrudged them doing it so much if it hadn’t put Ela in danger. And then there was the trouble that had been caused when the plan made her married. Even if it was to Charlie…

She shook her head. Stop, she told herself. Being married to Charlie is a problem to resolve, not a fringe benefit of this mess. She tried to force this tidy, practical thought down into her heart but it bobbed back up, along with the words Charlie had spoken just before she’d gone to sleep last night. 

“I want you to choose me.”

Her heart thudded, and she knew she wanted to choose him -- maybe not as a husband, but as someone to be with for as long as it lasted. But what she wanted wasn’t always what she needed, and defaulting to her old teenaged infatuation with all things Weasley was too easy, and also too complicated. Think, Hermione, think.

She had finished dressing and smoothed her clothes against her body, turning in front of the polished silver mirror fixed to the stone wall. She felt no more beautiful than she ever did, but she did feel powerful in her body. The only man who’d ever had an attraction-at-first-sight reaction to her was Viktor Krum. And Ron had never ceased to believe that it was anything but an attempt to spy on Harry during the tournament. She turned in the mirror. Maybe he was right.

Charlie was a beauty though -- wasn’t he? Her interest in men wasn’t usually about their looks, but she had a feeling Charlie would be beautiful to most people, not just to someone with a longstanding fancy for Weasleys. And their chemistry was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. She didn’t have to bicker with him in order to feel herself rising toward him. She was already there with just a look, just a casual word muttered at her over his shoulder. 

Did he feel it too? She laughed at herself. If he did indeed have a “problem” with her speaking any variation of his name, then he must. All at once, she wanted to see him more than she was shy of seeing him. She pulled a shawl around her shoulders and dashed toward the mess hall.

Charlie was seated where he had been yesterday evening, and his comrades had been sure to leave the place next to him empty. There seemed to be a collective murmur of relief when Hermione came in, trotted to Charlie’s side, and sat down, kissing his cheek and telling him, “Good morning, darling.”

Charlie couldn’t hide a look of slight surprise.

“What?” she said. “It’s what they’re all expecting of us, and calling you ‘darling’ gets around any problems we might have with me saying your name.”

He laughed and tousled her frizzing, freshly air-dried hair. “Brilliant, darling. Brilliant as always.” He speared a flat, squashy looking pastry from the platter at the centre of the table and eased it onto the plate in front of her. “Eat this. It’s called a cheese placenta, or something like that.”

“Delightful.”

“And this one is apple -- “ Charlie broke off as Doamna Marius drifted by on the opposite side of the table. He made a slight bow in her direction, which she appeared to ignore.

Hermione cleared her throat. “So, we check on our mother dragon, and then do some research today?”

He nodded. “If that’s what you need to do to make a thoughtful, conscious choice, then yes.”

“It is,” she said. “Only I don’t need to research Carpathian marriage rites.”

“No?”

“Did you hear me just now, darling?” she said, as if interrupting herself. “I just said ‘marriage,’ not ‘arrangement.’ And I said it right to your face.”

He grinned as he cut up her pastry. “You did indeed. Now start eating. Having me feed this to you piece by piece is a bit too much newlywed doting, even for this lot.”

She ate, but quickly, fighting back the urge to talk through her mouthfuls. “No, I don’t think the answer for what’s been happening here is to be found in marriage rites. We need to look into the history of dragon breeding instead.”

Charlie gave a nod almost too subtle to see. His eyes shifted around the room. “Let’s wait to talk about it until we’re on our way up to Ela’s paddock.”

When they were outside and alone, she continued, speaking low and watching for anyone close enough to listen. “I think Doamna Marius and her son might be trying to get some lucrative contraband by breeding the opal-eye with the iron-belly.”

Charlie frowned. “Breaching the dragon wards and endangering the creatures’ safety for money? No, Marius and his mother are already wealthy. They’re paid a huge lease for the use of all this land of theirs.”

She scoffed. “Since when did already having money ever stop rich people from trying to amass more?”

He shrugged. “All I’m saying is that I don’t think it’s like that. I’ve worked with Marius my entire adult life, and if there is really deliberate, dangerous dragon cross-breeding happening here, there’s some other motive besides money and some other perpetrator besides Marius. Someone driven by power, either political or magical”

“In my experience, those tend to be one and the same,” she said. “Powerful dark magic serving powerful dark ends.”

He heard the sadness, the wounded tone of her voice and dropped an arm around her shoulders, hugging her into his side. He wanted to tell her that things could never go back to the way they were when she was in school, that wizard civilization had moved past that kind of grasping depravity, that he was sorry for coming so late in the end, and he would never let that happen again. But who can promise anyone that? All he could do was press a kiss on the crown of her head.

She drew in a shaky breath. “Well then tell me, as a dragonologist, what kinds of special properties do the offspring of opal-eyes and iron-bellies have? What powers do they advance in wizards?”

Charlie released his hold on her, frowning as his mind worked through possibilities. “I’m not sure anyone knows. Their natural habitats are so far apart they’ve never mated under anything but artificial conditions. And under those controlled conditions, the father is usually an opal-eye and the mother and iron-belly, to make the size difference moot since the egg is carried in the larger of the parents.”

Hermione gave a triumphant little cry. “Big mother iron-bellies like smaller mates? Just like Ginny and Harry. Good for them.”

“I can’t speak to what they like, but I know what they get. And in the wild, and it’s not actually smaller males to mate with,” Charlie cautioned. “Smaller male mates are something the breeders engineer. Natural dragon mating seems rather awful to us. It’s not achieved through ‘chosen one’ charisma and true love. No, it involves pain and domination. So in the wild, successful males are usually larger than their female partners. It’s how they get them to submit without a breeder’s potions and spells. There is no natural, wild breeding of female opal-eyes and male iron-bellies, to my knowledge. And that leaves me without a guess as to what someone might be looking for in a cross-breed like this.”

“Morbid curiosity?” Hermione mused.

“From someone who was trying to exterminate dragons, maybe. But there’s no one like that here.” He stopped in the middle of the path. “You know, the more I think of it, the more I think we need to do this research in Bucharest rather than Oradea. It’s complicated, and the libraries are bigger in the capital. Plus, there would be more in English -- “

“No,” Hermione said, grabbing his hand in both of hers, her eyes wide, her expression verging on frightened.

Charlie waited for her to explain. She said nothing more, standing still, clutching his hand. “Why ever not?” he prodded.

She looked at her feet. “Let’s try Oradea first. Alright? They might have local archives that can tell us about dragon breeding that went on here centuries into the past. We can go to Bucharest eventually, if we have to, but…” She fell silent again.

With two fingers, Charlie tipped her chin, trying to get her to look up at him. “What’s wrong, Hermione? Tell me honestly. Why not Bucharest?”

“Please, Charlie,” she said, the first time she’d spoken his name to him all day. “You said we couldn’t be sure that whatever magic Doamna Marius used on us yesterday would have any effect outside the Carpathians. I suppose I’m not ready to test that yet. And if we don’t go any farther than Oradea, we won’t have to find out.”

Charlie dropped the pack he’d been carrying and scooped her up, lifting her feet off the ground as he held her close against his front, her legs bending at the knees and gently kicking behind her. He leaned back to make her slant toward him as he spoke into her face. “You don’t want to risk accidentally divorcing me by leaving these mountains before you’ve made your thoughtful, conscious choice.”

Her eyelids were low, hiding her eyes from his. Still, she nodded her head, agreeing. Charlie bobbed his head forward, kissing her on one cheek and then the other before she held his chin in her hand and brought her mouth to his. 

He smiled against her lips. “Hey, I’m on my way to work, darling,” he said as she tugged at his bottom lip with her mouth. He couldn’t play at not kissing her back for long. That surge of overwhelming connection to her, desire for her was back again. It wasn’t just a fluke of one night locked up together in his house with her dressed in his clothes and wrapped in his sheets. It was something more enduring, commanding. 

Instead of teasing, he held her tightly and returned the sweetness she gave him until he wasn’t feeling sweet anymore but tense and heated. They had to stop, and he set her feet back on the ground, leaning against her as he worked to quiet his breath. He opened his eyes to see hers were still closed, her cheeks pink. “You alright?” he asked.

She nodded against his forehead. “Yes, let’s go see our dragon.”

He picked the pack up off the path and started walking again. “We need to go see the iron-belly before Ela. If we’re lucky, he’ll be on his paddock eating breakfast and we’ll be able to keep him penned in there. Want to make sure we won’t stumble into him once we’re in the woods. We’ve got to get that breach in their wards mended whether the pair of them like it or not.”

Hermione took his hand as they walked on. “What does everyone here call the iron-belly? He’s got to have a name.”

“No, not really. He’s just the iron-belly. There’s only one, so no one’s bothered.”

She tossed her head. “Well, I think he needs a name. There’s only one opal-eye here and they gave her a name, after all. I’ll claim it as the sanctuary’s wedding present to me, the right to name this dragon.” She’d said it just as they crested the rise, bringing into view the large paddock where the iron-belly was feasting on something very bloody. 

Charlie chuckled. “Call him whatever you want, darling. It may catch on.”

“Alright,” she said. “If the opal-eye is named Gabriela, one of the last things I wish to hear her called, then I’m naming this one the last thing Ronald would want to hear it named.”

Charlie smirked. “Krum?”

She shouted out a laugh. “No. This dragon is hereby named Malfoy.”

Charlie pulled his head back in surprise. “After that nasty pureblood family Great-aunt Lucretia’s niece Narcissa married into? Why?”

Hermione hopped toward him and squeezed his cheeks between her hands. “Oh, Charlie. You really are above all our childish foolishness, aren’t you? Maybe that’s what I love about you.”

A moment of shocked silence passed between them. Hermione stepped back, her smile transformed into fright, her hands still held in front of her in the shape of Charlie’s jawline.

“That’s what you -- you -- what?” he said.

She launched into more of the uncharacteristic sputtering she’d been doing since she came here. “Oh -- what I said was -- well, of course -- as a -- you know -- what I meant was -- “

“Weasley!”

It was Bogdan, calling up from the paddock. Malfoy the iron-belly dragon was sauntering away from the skeleton and hide of his meal, making for the forest. In seconds, he would be gone, off to terrorize the woods for the rest of the day.

Charlie swore as he tore into his pack. He grabbed something from it that looked like a paintbrush, gave it a hard shake and restored it to the size of a broom. In an instant, he was flying, racing down from the rise, over the paddock, grasping the broomstick in one hand, brandishing his wand in the other.

The dragon sensed his approach, narrowed its silver-grey eyes, lowered its head, flapped its wings, and sprinted toward the lane leading into the woods.

Bogdan was shouting, waving his arms and shooting off flares, trying to draw the dragon’s attention from Charlie. It would not be fooled. Charlie was almost in range of the far perimetre of the paddock, almost close enough to seal the wards all the way around, cutting off the forest access. He was sitting upright on his broom, gripping it with his legs, the wandwork almost complete. 

He wore no protective gear, not so much as a cap on his head, just the clothes he’d worn to breakfast. This made it all the more horrifying when the iron-belly, enraged at being penned in the paddock, sucked in its breath. The sound was like the roar of a Muggle jet engine about to thrust itself into the sky.

Charlie heard it and glanced behind himself as he dived toward where Bogdan stood. The wards would keep the fire inside the paddock fence but Bogdan had slit them open, low against the grass, and wide enough for Charlie to crawl through once he hit the ground.

Hermione saw it all from where she stood on the rise. A part of her mind was back in the Room of Hidden Things in Hogwarts castle. Vincent Crabbe had conjured Fiendfyre, and she was watching from above as he tumbled into the flames, consumed. 

She heard her own voice as if it was someone else’s, someone mad with grief. “Charlie!”

The iron-belly was exhaling, a great plume of orange fire ripping through the cool mountain air. The bristles of Charlie’s broom were aflame. It careened toward the turf and he jumped off of it, rolling over the grass, skidding toward the fence, disoriented. Bogdan was shouting, his hands clawing through the slit in the wards. He caught hold of Charlie’s leg and yanked him out of the range of a second blast of dragon's breath. Together, they got him clear of the paddock. He rolled onto his back on the grass outside the fence as Bogdan sealed the wards shut.

Hermione arrived, falling to her knees beside him. “Where are you hurt? How? Show me. Tell me.”

Charlie panted up at the sky, shaking his head, barely whispering. “Not hurt.”

“How can you not be hurt?” she shouted at him. “The fire. And you fell.”

He lifted his right arm, smeared green and black. “Bit of a friction burn from that skid in the grass, maybe,” he said. He ran his hand over the back of his head. “Might have singed the ends of my hair again, but we can trim that off. I was about due for a haircut.”

Bogdan grasped Charlie by the wrist, their hands locking, and pulled him to sitting. He patted Charlie hard on the shoulder and they exchanged words of thanks and relief.

Hermione watched Bogdan walk away, apparently unconcerned. He was calling out loud chastisements to the iron-belly as it crushed the charred remains of the broom into splinters between its jaws. 

She looked back at Charlie. “You’re really not -- ?” she began.

Charlie nodded, still breathless. “Yeah, I’m not particularly hurt. Just the usual.”

She flung her arms around his neck and choked a sob into his neck. Charlie slumped against her, the closest he could come to embracing her for the moment. “I’m sorry,” she said, still sniffling. “I always knew your life was like this. The first time I saw you, there was a huge half-healed burn on your arm, for stars’ sake. I shouldn’t be like this now. I’m not usually such a mess.”

“I know,” he said, speaking softly into the side of her head. “I’ve read all the news reports about you and Harry and baby brother. You’re brave and brilliant and impressive. But today, you’ve still got portkey-lag from all your traveling yesterday. And someone very inconsiderate kept you up too late last night.”

She ignored the excuses he offered her. “You’re so good to me, Charlie. Every time I’m near you, you’re caring for me. All these years. No -- no one else will do it. No one even tries. Harry and Ron are looking to families of their own now, my parents are gone -- “

“I’m here, I haven’t gone,” he crooned, rocking gently.

She hitched in a breath to say more. “You don’t have to get yourself incinerated while I look on. Alright? If you have to, if you want to, just leave me, like everyone else does.”

There was strength in his arms again and he closed them around her and pulled her to sit in his lap. “I am not incinerated, and I am not leaving.” He brushed a kiss against her cheek. “Now help us up before poor Bogdan has to watch me rolling around in the grass snogging you.”

She almost laughed making a faint mewling sound instead, her tears ended.

“Does your throat hurt from screaming that loudly?” Charlie teased.

She shrugged one shoulder. “A little.”

“Let’s go quietly then,” Charlie said. “Come along. Ela is waiting.”


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So strange, writing for a small ship after a year of writing Dramione. Is anyone reading, lol? Say hi if you saw this. Love, DDD

Things were quiet on the opal-eye dragon paddock when Hermione and Charlie arrived. Gabriela was still nosing her breakfast, eating, but not with a dragon’s usual voracious appetite. This morning, she was docile even by her own standards. It meant that closing off her access to the woods and venturing in to repair the broken wards would be easy -- or at least, not likely to end in anyone being burned to death

As they’d walked from the Ukrainian Iron-belly dragon’s enclosure to Ela’s, Hermione had fussed over the arm Charlie had skidded across the grass on as he jumped from a burning broom.

“I’ve told you, it’s not hurt,” Charlie said as she dabbed at the green stain on his arm with a damp cloth. “And there’s no point in washing it until I’m finished work anyway.”

“First of all,” she said, continuing with the process of delicately removing the green mark without aggravating the skin underneath it, “I’m not sure you understand how most people would define being hurt. This is a rather nasty abrasion, and it needs tending.”

He rolled his eyes as she doused the cloth in dittany. She didn’t hide her look of satisfaction when he hissed as she pressed it to his skin. That means it’s working.

“And second,” she went on, “everyone here acknowledges you as my husband. Therefore, you are my responsibility, and I can’t have you carrying on, dirty and damaged, while I do nothing about it. I do have my pride, Charles Prewett Weasley.”

At the sound of his name, Charlie gave a low growl and lunged, his face bowing into Hermione’s neck as she worked over his arm. His mouth was hot and sweet and she tipped her head back to receive it in spite of herself, even as she scolded him. “Enough. You may have been half-killed, but you’re still at work.”

“Well, you watch your mouth then,” he said against her skin.

She was laughing and shoving at him. “Get off me, darling. Here’s Bogdan.”

While Charlie and Bogdan worked in the trees, out of sight, Hermione sat outside the paddock fence, her Ministry notebook open in her lap, jotting notes for the white paper she had come here to research. It was hard to stay focused on the page with the dragon so near. Ela wasn’t nearly as exuberant as she’d been yesterday. It wouldn’t be long now before she laid the egg. Charlie or another dragonologist with his skills would need to be there when she did, prepared to perform a risky intervention if the egg started to turn her inside out. Hermione shuddered at the thought. Poor Ela, suffering for love -- or at least, the screaming, biting dragon version of it.

Her meal finished, her scales groomed, Ela readied herself for a nap on the grass as the sun grew warmer. Instead of curling up, cat-like, in the way dragons usually favour, she stretched herself out in a long line, as if trying to expand herself to better contain the egg. As Charlie said, dragons are about as clever as birds, not capable of expressing emotions on their faces beyond sleepy and terrifying. But Hermione almost believed Ela looked sad, blinking her iridescent, milky eyes as she drifted off to sleep. Was she scared about the changes in her body? Or did she just miss that big, awful Malfoy-the-iron-belly consort of hers?

Hermione shook her head, laughing quietly at herself. All this playing house with Charlie must be making her sentimental. If she didn’t know better, she’d believe Ela remembered her from that escape from Gringott’s, and that was why she chose to settle for her nap so close to where Hermione sat. Sisters in arms.

When Charlie came back, the sun was as high as it was going to get. He opened his pack, handed Hermione a sandwich for lunch, and crashed down beside her to eat his own. “Well, romantic as it might have been, the iron-belly didn’t break through the wards between the enclosures to get to Ela himself,” he said. “Not unless he’s learned how to use a wand.”

Bogdan whistled, miming slashing through the wards with a wand.

“Whoever did it didn’t even bother to make it look like dragon damage. It was almost too obvious that it was wand work, as if they wanted us to know. Without a doubt, wizards did it,” he said. 

“Or a -- “

“Witch, yes,” he finished, looking off into the mountains instead of at Hermione. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking nearly enough,” she said. “I can’t just sit here anymore, trying to concentrate on laws that aren’t going to protect these animals if someone is creeping around tampering with their enclosures. All I’m doing is taking on Ela’s melancholy and not getting any closer to finding out what’s really going on -- or how it might be connected to you and me.”

Charlie didn’t argue, but he didn’t rush to make any suggestions either.

“That Floo in the mess hall,” Hermione continued. “It must be able to get me to the university library in Oradea. I’ve got a text translator with me. It’s useless for speech and not much better than what the Muggles use for reading between languages themselves, but it’s something. I’m sure I can use it to make a start researching in a Romanian library, even without you.”

“You don’t need to go without me,” Charlie said. “Now that the enclosures are secure, Bogdan’s got everything under control for the afternoon. Right Bogdan?”

Whether he understood or not, Bogdan gave a thumbs up, nodding.

Charlie had the Weasley talent for eating quickly, as if he was still in competition with five other boys, and he was already swallowing the last of his sandwich and reaching for an apple. “But, of course, if you’d rather I not come with you, I’d get that. I mean, I have been in your face, day and night, non-stop since you got here, so…”

“So you’d like a break,” she said, her head bowed, nodding.

Charlie tossed the apple between his hands. “No, actually,” he said. “But I’d understand completely if you did, since -- “

Bogdan shouted something at them, getting to his feet, shaking his head and stomping away.

Charlie laughed.

Hermione took the apple from Charlie and bit it. As she handed it back to him, she said, “Darling, please come with me to Oradea. I don’t want a break. I want help, if I can get it. I want a guide and a translator with a human brain, and someone to care about me in a city where no one knows me.”

“You don’t want a break.” He confirmed, speaking cautiously again, as his good dragonologist self.

She spread her arms, waving at the mountains and trees, the green grass. “I am on a break, every minute I’m here. This is not my everyday world. This is a break from it. Having you in my face is part of this experience, part of the break. So stay with me, if you can.”

\-------------------------------

Oradea was a beautiful city and Charlie seemed to know it well. He brought them there through a side-along apparation, arriving in a thicket of trees on a university campus, holding her closer and more firmly than necessary again as they went. In the library, they took a sharp turn down a stairway curving into the wall, invisible until Charlie accessed it by pulling on the handle of an old brass fire extinguisher cabinet. This was the wizarding section. It was dark and vast, stretching into shadows, extending far past the Muggle portion of the library overhead.

“Dragon breeding,” Charlie muttered as they set off into the stacks. “Right this way.”

Hermione followed him between tall shelves made of a dark, heavy wood, each of them lit by copper lamps that had turned green centuries ago. The place seemed deserted, no patrons and no librarians anywhere. Something was rising in her the further they went into the labyrinth of bookcases -- old fantasies about snogging in libraries when she was in school. This library in particular seemed to be made for it.

She cleared the thought as she cleared her throat, trotting along behind Charlie. He was striding ahead of her, walking purposefully. He had left his leather apron and cap behind at the sanctuary, but he still looked like he was hard at work, nothing effete about him, even when he was here as a researcher. He kept all of his physical power, all the force he ever carried in his legs and shoulders, bearing him through the quiet, studious spaces.

“You must come here often,” she said as he stopped and began plucking books from the shelves.

He smirked, mounting a ladder to extract something from an upper ledge. “You could say that. How’s your Latin?”

She had to clear her throat again. “Not bad. I read ancient Norse and Celtic runes too.”

He hummed. “Any Greek?”

She staggered slightly as he hopped off the ladder and loaded her arms with books. “A bit,” she answered. “The classics.”

He nodded. “Of course. This way.” 

They came to a table under a small window set high in the wall, illuminating the underground space with daylight. Charlie spread the books out, sorting them by category, explaining in general what she’d find in each one. 

“I’d start here,” he said, nudging a title toward her. “This is a comprehensive survey of all the dragon breeds raised in the Carpathians and environs since the Roman Empire. It’s in Latin so you should do alright without help. I’ll take another look through this one. It outlines dragon by-products you don’t see anymore -- the obsolete and the illegal.”

She stood stunned for a moment, wordlessly running her fingers over the spines of the books he’d stacked on the table for them.

“What?” Charlie asked.

She shook herself. “Nothing. It’s just -- thank you. I seldom find research partners who are so…”

Charlie cringed. “Obsessive? Overbearing?”

“No,” she laughed. “So knowledgeable, and helpful. When I was in school, my research partners were more interested in copying my work than in helping me with it.”

“Flaming Ronnie,” Charlie muttered. “And you liked him anyway.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I did. It's nice to find a boy who isn't afraid to tell me I’m smart. But I could have liked him more. All those hours in the library with him peeking over my shoulder and I never kissed him while we were there. Strange, now I think of it. It’s not like libraries fail to lend themselves to -- intimacy.”

They were standing at the table, close enough for Hermione to see Charlie’s throat bob as he swallowed. 

“If Ron had been more helpful with the books,” she continued, “I suppose things might have been different.”

Charlie’s arm was around her waist, his hand in the small of her back, pulling her in to whisper down into her face. “I disagree. School libraries are too crowded for much intimacy. Though as you may have noticed, unlike Hogwarts, this library is almost completely unmonitored -- “

“Charlie -- “

He covered her mouth with his palm, hushing her. “Don’t tempt me, love. This place accentuates your alluring smartness. You and I could disappear here for days.”

This observation did nothing to deter her. She gripped his wrist and pulled his hand from her mouth, rising onto her toes as she did, closer, her lips parted. He meant to be disciplined with himself, to kiss her quickly and withdraw, setting both of them to work. But her tongue flicked between his teeth, and he crumbled, helpless to withhold the library snog she’d always dreamed of from her any longer.

She was leaning back, over the tabletop, one of Charlie’s hands holding her tightly around the waist, his other flat against the tabletop, holding them up, keeping her from pulling him down any further. Her fingers were twisting at the buttons of his shirt when he finally pushed off the table, standing up with a noisy sigh. “But we don’t have days to lose here,” he said, his voice hoarse and breathy. “Ela is going to pass that egg in the next day or so. And we need to find out what someone might be trying to do to her, or take from her before then.”

Hermione straightened up, she let go of Charlie’s shoulders, sliding down his chest to hang at her sides again. She had never been this frustrated, like a teenager with a gorgeous but too righteous boyfriend. Only she hadn't had a proper boyfriend as a teenager. 

And Charlie was no boyfriend. He was twenty-nine years old, strong and self-controlled, and, somehow, her husband. That was what made everything so difficult. The matter between them was too serious to turn over to raw desire. Charlie guarded it, though he was frustrated too. When he'd leaned over her, pressing himself so close just now, she'd felt it, unmistakable proof of his attraction. Part her was pleased to notice it, thrilled that, for once, he hadn't hidden it from her. Another part of her was nervous, worried about how long they could go on, how high this intensity could climb before they’d have to decide between consummation and ending everything.

But all she said for now was, “Right. Let’s turn up the lights.”

So they read.

The first book Hermione opened was fruitful. She nudged Charlie and he jumped as if she’d woken him up. “Look at this,” she said. “There was once a species of opal-eye dragon native to Ukraine. It’s been extinct for ages but it was once indigenous not far from here.”

Charlie rubbed his eyes. “Right. Ural opal-eye. But like you say, it’s not the same species as Ela. Quite different. Massive and with a collar of venomous spines.”

Hermione hummed. “What do we know about corneal opalescence? Is it the same fluid in the tear ducts of every opal-eyed species?”

“That’s a magical property more than a biological one,” he said. “In Ela’s species the tear ducts are like cauldrons, constantly brewing the opalizing potion. It might have been the same for the Ural opal-eye.”

She frowned. “But what do the opalized tears do? I mean, what are their uses in the magic wizards practice?”

Charlie shrugged. “They can be used to see through opaque surfaces. But so can plenty of other potions. I’m not sure why anyone would risk tangling with dragons to see through something when you can squeeze a potion that will do the same thing out of a ripe grittleweed pod.”

She tapped her quill on the tabletop, thinking. As she did, Charlie yawned -- again. She set her quill on the table and took on the tone she didn’t realize she’d learned from Molly Weasley. “Look at you -- knackered. How did you sleep last night, darling?” she asked.

He covered his mouth as another yawn came. “Hardly at all. Had a busy morning too, if you’ll recall. Maybe I’ll go find some coffee.”

She held him down by his shoulders as he started to rise. “No. Coffee is a quick fix, not an abiding answer. Here, lay your head in my lap and get some rest while I read. I need to see the book you’re looking at anyway -- the one on illegal and obsolete dragon products. Give it here. I’ll wake you when I’ve finished with it.”

He scoffed. “Then I’m no better than Ronnie as a research partner.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You’ve picked enough books to keep me busy until sundown. So take some rest, darling.”

Charlie sighed as he gave in, lying across two chairs, his feet still on the floor, the back of his head on Hermione’s thighs. 

“There,” she said as he nestled his mass of dense, coarse wavy red hair against her. “How is that?”

He chuckled. “Pleasant enough.”

“Good. Now sleep.”

He was exhausted enough to drift off to sleep in this position. He was even dreaming, his eyes moving beneath his lids. Hermione sat back in her chair, the book held in one hand, her other hand resting on Charlie’s chest, his deep breaths bearing it up and down. 

Before his body settled fully into its rhythm, he coughed in his sleep, his head tossing. It jostled her out of her reading, moving her to open her hand and rub his pectoral muscles and sternum, quieting him. She looked down at him as she did. Had she honestly told him she loved something about him today? As she sat in the silent, ancient library, she couldn’t remember what exactly it was she’d said she loved about him. Maybe that was because, by now, it was just -- everything. She lifted her hand from his chest and caressed his cheek instead. He turned toward it in his sleep, his lips in her palm, his breath warm.

Read, Hermione, read.

This second book was a good resource as well, referring her to another one already on the table that was more specific to dragon related potions. It made a reference to the Ural opal-eye’s tears. Theirs didn’t just make opaque surfaces transparent. They also made occluded minds transparent. Their tears were better than Veratiserum, which only worked if the person being questioned was asked the right questions. They allowed a skilled Legilimens to read any mind without resistance by Occlumency.

She checked some other references, organized her notes, and shook Charlie awake.

He sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “Wait,” he said after she finished. “So your theory is that some hostile world power is hoping that by breeding the Ukrainian iron-belly to a surviving opal-eye species, they’ll come up with an offspring similar enough to the extinct Ural opal-eye to produce the same tears? Ones that can be used to overcome Occlumency?”

“Yeah. What do you think? Is it possible? Would that kind of breeding work?”

Charlie blinked. “The iron-belly ought to be genetically very similar to the Ural. That’s more than plausible. One thing that contributed to their extinction was interbreeding with the more aggressive iron-bellies -- “

“So someone might be trying to bring their characteristics back, by taking them from somewhere new, from Ela’s gene pool,” Hermione finished.

Charlie was reaching into the landslide of books on the table. “Show me that bit about Ural tears being used to neutralize Occlumency.”

Hermione flipped the book open to where she’d marked it. Charlie read it himself. It was just as she’d said. “It was once used as a military potion, an espionage one, forced on prisoners to find out what they were hiding during questioning,” he said.

She nodded. “It’s brutal. Have you ever seen it? Seen Legilimency?”

He shook his head. “No. But Dad said Harry…”

“Yes,” she confirmed. Her face was pale, her eyes wet. “All the time during the war. Waking up screaming, in pain, vomiting. Legilimency is violence. A violation. Whoever is after this potion is after a torture aid. They want to overcome, to control, to take what we’ve fought for all apart again -- ”

Charlie took her in his arms, scooting her off her chair and into his lap. “Slow down a bit,” he said. “Let’s look a little more. There might be another use for Ural opal-eye tears. Something less terrifying, less global. We don’t need to leap to the worst possible conclusion.” 

She began to protest. “No, I’m not going to let myself be talked into sitting and waiting politely while evil gets its act together. Not again -- “

“Hermione,” he hushed her with a whisper in her ear. “You know I’m not like the people who ignored you and called you a liar when you were a child fighting to save the world. My entire family was on your side then, and we still are, always, more than ever.” His hands found her face, lifting it so he could look her in the eyes as he said, “I’m not trying to undermine you. I’m trying to get you to acknowledge how badly you’ve been hurt, and to admit that it might still affect how you react to trouble.”

She bowed her head, speechless, afraid she might cry.

“All I’m asking,” he said, “is that we finish what we’ve started here with this research, read a bit more before we rush back to the sanctuary looking for wicked spies among the good, generous people I’ve lived and worked with for the past decade.”

She still made no answer. Charlie held her close again. “No matter what happens, we’re not going to have to save the world tonight. Just one dragon and her baby. We’ll keep them safe. We can do that. We’ll confound whatever plan is operating there, and it will be over as simply as that. Don’t, Hermione. Don’t go back to that place inside your head where nearly everything depends on you. You never have to do that again.”

For the second time that day, her arms were around Charlie’s neck and she was sobbing into him. He held her as she shuddered out her tears, rocking gently, his cheek pressed to her head, his hands running firmly up and down the length of her back, as if to help ease the sobs out, to send them away.

Eventually, she wiped her face and released him. She wasn’t sure what to say so he spoke first, back on task. “If you’re alright,” he said, “I’m going to fetch another book. One on Occlumency. It will be in Romanian, so you’ll have to bear with me. Alright?”

She nodded and shifted back to her own chair. “Right. Thank you.”

They read on. Charlie came back with his book. Now rested and alert, he focused on the pages, flipping them almost impatiently, his forehead folding into furrows as he went. “Listen to this,” he said at last. “It says here that anti-Occlumency potions, at their simplest level, are memory aids. They didn’t even need to go all the way to the torture uses. They were outlawed when so many wizarding societies started their examination systems, so people couldn’t use them to cheat.”

She blinked. “So maybe our spies are endangering Ela’s life just to pass their NEWTS?”

She meant it as a sick joke, but Charlie nodded. “It’s worth considering. Rich people will pay for anything. You must have gone to school with stupid kids with rich parents. How are they ever going to get any power as Ministry officials and that sort of thing if they can’t get their NEWTS?”

She thought of Gregory Goyle. What did he do for a living now? And could any amount of memory aid have helped him pass his exams? She had a moment of selfish reflection, thinking of what she could accomplish with a perfect memory. 

Memory…

She was on her feet, snatching the book from Charlie though she still didn’t read Romanian. “Muggles,” she said. “What does it say about the effects of opalizing potion on Muggle memories? What does it say, Charlie?”

He gasped. Her parents -- she still hadn’t uncharmed the memories of her Muggle parents, the family she’d sacrificed at the onset of the war. 

He didn’t resist as the book went out of his hands. But he was sorry when he had to tell her, “There’s nothing.”


	7. Seven

Hermione was on her feet, snatching the book from Charlie though she still couldn’t read Romanian. “Muggles,” she said. “What does this book say about the effects of opalizing potion on Muggle memories? Does it fix them when they’re damaged? Does it? What does it say, Charlie?”

He gasped. Of course. Her parents -- she still hadn’t uncharmed the memories of her Muggle parents, the family she’d sacrificed at the onset of the war. 

He didn’t resist her as the book went out of his hands. But he was sorry when he had to tell her, “It doesn’t say. There’s nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Yes, it’s typical wizarding scholarship, myopic, hardly a word about Muggles anywhere in it. I’m sorry,” he said.

She slammed the book closed, raised it even with her eye-level, and dropped it hard against the tabletop. It landed safely but with a clamorous slap on the wood. From far away, for the first time that day, they heard the sound of another human being noisily clearing their throat. 

Charlie gathered her hands in his, knowing she’d come to regret it if she took out any more of her frustration on the books. “We’ll find something else, love,” he said. “Maybe not here, but somewhere. Maybe in Ukraine, or even New Zealand. When you're ready to get your parents, we’ll go wherever we have to. We’ll find something -- “

“No, there’s nothing,” she said in a speaking voice that echoed as if it was a shout in the quiet of the library. She turned in a circle, out of his hold, pacing as if she was trapped in a cage. “This is always how it happens. Years and years of research on reversing memory modification, my own and other people’s -- every one of Guilderoy Lockhart’s illustrious healers on the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo’s, for stars’ sake. None of us has come up with anything. Oh yes, there are moments like this when something seems to come close, but then -- nothing.”

Charlie glanced miserably at the books he’d stacked on the table, wracking his exhaustive knowledge of the library’s dragon resources for a book they might have forgotten to check.

She went on, pacing and ranting. “No, the only way I’m going to find something to fix my parents is to invent it myself. I won’t find it in any book.” She collapsed to sit heavily in her chair, her head in her hands. “I have to do it myself but -- but I’m so scared, Charlie. What if I get it wrong? What if I go to rescue my parents and end up taking away from them what little I left them with the first time? As they are now, they can still practice dentistry, and love each other. But what if I...”

He knelt on the floor in front of her chair, reaching past the mass of her hair to find her hands again. She let him hold them, but he knew to keep quiet, waiting for her to catch her breath and finish.

“That bold teenaged girl who modified their memories while they sat having their tea in front of the television -- she doesn’t exist anymore,” Hermione said. “All that’s left of her is me, and I’m terrified at what I’m capable of. How could I -- how did I…”

Her words trailed away again, fading into the long, dusty silence all around them. 

“Let me help you,” Charlie said at last. “What have I always told you, all these years? You are not alone in the world. Stop acting like you have to sort this out on your own. I can be your family for as long as you need me. Why not? For as long as you’re willing to have me as a husband, your parents are my family too. And we can work this out together. All of us. I don’t know how exactly, not yet, but -- “

She looked up from behind her hair, slowly, her eyes wide. "My family? For as long as I want? Charlie, I -- ”

But he was interrupting her. “Don’t answer now. Not when you’re distraught like this. Just be still. Think. At least for tonight, just think about how long you want me to stay. But don’t decide yet. I don’t think distraught Hermione should be allowed to make important decisions that calm, sane Hermione will have to live with later.”

She sniffed, almost smiling. “Distraught -- that’s what you called me the night I kissed you for the first time, in the Forbidden Forest, when I was still with Ron.”

“I gave you good advice that night, didn’t I?”

“Did you?”

They both breathed out quiet laughter as she wiped her face dry with the back of her hand.

Charlie waved toward the window overhead. “Look, it’s almost dark already. I’ve got to get back to relieve Bogdan now that Ela needs constant watchcare. Are we alright to go back? You could apparate to the sanctuary on your own, now you’ve been there. But I’d rather like to go home a different way, and it means staying together.”

She looked around the library one more time. The books would still be there if she thought of something else and needed to come back. She nodded. “Alright then. Let’s go home, for now.”

Outside the library, Charlie led her back to the copse of trees they’d apparated to when they first arrived. From his jacket, Charlie produced a paintbrush, the second one she’d seen him handle today. And just like the first time, he shook it and restored it to the size of a full broom. If the dragons torched one every few days, he must go through them by the dozen. This one was slightly longer than usual, a telling sign that it could carry two.

“Oh no,” she said, both hands raised. “No, no, no.”

“Come on,” he cajoled. “How can you expect yourself to make a thoughtful, conscious decision about our arrangement without a tandem test flight first?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Our arrangement? This is part of some courtship display? Got some stuff to strut, Captain Weasley?”

He gave a slow hiss. “And we discover yet another variation of my name that’s a problem when I hear you say it.”

She swatted his arm. “Honestly.”

“Fine,” he said. “I won’t ask you to fly all the way back to the sanctuary like this. But can I at least fly you over the city? Just a quick flight to admire the view. Absolutely no quidditch maneuvres. No strutting. Promise.” 

Arms folded, one foot tapping, she considered the offer. The last tandem flight she’d been on -- her most recent broom travel of any kind -- had been an emergency in the Room of Hidden Things, when she had clung to Ron as he pulled Gregory Goyle out of the fire that had killed Vincent Crabbe.

She cinched her eyes closed, scowling at the ghastly memory. The time had come to push it further into her history, buried under something new and perhaps not unpleasant. She answered Charlie with one sharp nod. “Alright. Let’s go. All the way back to the sanctuary. Now.”

It was already dark enough for them to be able to move quietly, inconspicuously over the small city. All they had to do was get away without attracting attention. Charlie straddled the broom and Hermione moved to get behind him. “What are you doing?” he asked, twisting to see her over his shoulder.

She blinked. “You’re driving. So I’m the passenger, in the back.”

She was about to throw a leg over the broom when Charlie grasped her wrist. “Ronnie used to put you on the back?” He shook his head. “No wonder he couldn’t hold onto you."

She tossed her head. “It’s not just Ron. I was in the back when Kingsley Shacklebolt took me on a thestral to get Harry out of his aunt’s house for the last time. The back is where the non-pilot sits. I have it on excellent authority -- ”

“Oh, right,” he said, nodding. “You’ve got no older siblings, and no wizard parents who would have flown you around before you learned how yourself. No, darling, when we’re flying with someone we’re responsible for, someone we cherish, we don’t sit them in the back.” Charlie grinned as he tugged at her wrist, guiding her around himself to the front of the broom.

“You want me up here?” she said. “But then -- how will I hold onto you?”

His grin grew even wider. “You don’t. I hold onto you.” 

He tugged harder, bumping her legs against the broomstick. She tripped more than stepped over it, her back to him, her hands throttling the wood. Her breath caught as Charlie leaned forward, his arms closing around her, his hands holding the broomstick in front of hers. Then he waited, not crowding her more than necessary, leaving her space, waiting for her response.

He was not disappointed.

“Ah, like this,” she said. “No this seating arrangement never occurred to Ronald. Or to me.” And beyond Charlie’s fondest expectations, she crowded into him, her back against his chest, the crown of her head against his cheek, her hips between his thighs. She turned her face toward his, hearing the sharp intake of his breath as she said, “Off we go.”

Steady, Weasley.

He didn’t ask her to help push off as they rose into the air. It was dark but they were still low enough to be heard from below, so she bit her lip, closed her eyes, and held back a nervous squeal as they lost touch with the ground.

“Too fast?” he asked, not teasing but apologetic.

She forced herself to inhale to speak. “It’s fine. It’s just me. I haven’t flown since -- “ she lost her breath again, “since the Battle of Hogwarts.”

Charlie felt like his heart broke. At twenty-two years old, this woman was half made of trauma. It was what made her so strong, so miraculous, but also part of what made him so desperate to protect her and to -- he nearly lost his own breath -- to love her. 

Did he love her? Not as he had for years, with the fuzzy, comfy affection of a family member like a sister or cousin, but as a wife, HIS wife. Did he already love her like that?

For now, he needed to reassure her. He held the broom in one hand and wrapped his arm around her waist. “I’ve got you,” he said. “We’re safe.”

She turned her head toward his voice, her forehead against his chin. “Don’t let me go, Charlie.”

He spoke against her skin. “I won’t.”

As the lights of the city passed beneath them, he didn’t pester her to open her eyes to look at the view, though it was lovely. Somehow she knew to look right before they would have been out of sight. She’d seen all of London from the air before, but somehow, Oradea seemed more splendid.

“It’s so pretty,” she said, her face still close to Charlie’s. “Thank you, darling.”

It was the first time her “darling” had sounded sincere to him, and his heart crashed again. “Are you sure you want to fly all the way back? I know what you said, but we don’t have to.”

“No, it’s alright,” she said. “Hold onto me, Charlie, and it will be alright.”

\-----------------------------------

Bogdan was on his feet and ready to head back to dinner at the settlement the moment he spotted the broom in the sky above him. He made his report already walking backward, toward the rise. Ela was lethargic but restless, refusing to eat, getting up only to try to get into the woods to hide. There was biological show too, all the signs of a gravid dragon about to lay eggs.

“I’m going to let her into the woods,” Charlie said. “She and the iron-belly probably made a nest back there days ago. She’ll be less agitated if she can be in it.”

Hermione was alarmed. “How will you monitor her back there? You can’t cross the wards and go with her.”

“I can,” he said. “Once she’s on her nest, she won’t get off until the egg hatches. That won’t be tonight. We’ll have to feed her in there, just like the iron-belly would if he was any kind of suitable mate for her.”

Without getting any closer to the lane into the woods, Charlie slashed upward with his wand. The wards keeping Ela out tore open and she lumbered between the trees as quickly as she could move herself.

“The poor dear,” Hermione sighed as she went.

“Poor you, who didn’t get a chance to nap in the library,” Charlie said. “Go back to the settlement, have your tea, and go to bed.”

“That’s what I won’t do,” she said. “At least, not until you’ve had something to eat too. I’ll be back soon.”

He accepted with a nod. “Thank you. In the meantime, I’ll be sneaking up on a dragon in the dark woods.”

Hermione didn’t make it inside the mess hall. The lights were on inside, flaring warmly through the windows. Dinner service was in full swing, but Doamna Marius was waiting outside for her. She trotted forward, chattering in Hungarian, pushing a picnic basket into Hermione’s hands. Once Hermione took it, Doamna Marius was forcing a pack onto her shoulder before spinning her around and pointing Hermione back in the direction she’d just come. Back to Charlie.

Of course.

Through a lot of waving and slow shouting, Hermione managed to make a case for visiting the loo before going back, but Doamna Marius waited outside the mess hall ladies’ toilet for her and then walked with her, like a military escort, toward the paddock. All the while, she spoke in low, grandmotherly tones, patting Hermione's back as if comforting and encouraging her, and then getting louder, bossy again. Hermione didn't understand the words but there was a rhythm and a cycle to it.

When they arrived at the now empty paddock, Doamna Marius gave a weary sigh, crossed herself in the Orthodox way, and with a nimbleness Hermione never would have expected, climbed the fence and made for the woods, beckoning and calling for Hermione to follow her.

Hermione’s eyes narrowed as she watched the old witch making her way with expert familiarity into the forest by the light of her wand. Of course she would know where the nest was. She had probably known all along.

At least her company meant Hermione didn’t get lost in the dark looking for Charlie. Doamna Marius was still talking away as she brought the pair of them together again. As Charlie watched, amused, his eyebrows lifted, Doamna Marius pulled the pack off Hermione’s shoulder, thrust her arm inside, and pulled out a flat canvass square. It unfolded itself on the ground into a tent as Doamna Marius dusted her hands off with a theatrical flare. It was an odd tent, with only three walls and a floor, completely open in the front so whoever was lying in it would have a constant uninterrupted view of the dragon.

She yanked the picnic basket from the crook of Hermione’s arm and laid it in the mouth of the tent. At that point, they both expected her to leave but Doamna Marius spun on her heel, wagging one finger in Charlie’s face, speaking sternly to him in Hungarian while he nodded and nodded.

It was impossible to apparate in or out of any of the dragon enclosures so she left walking, still muttering to herself, undergrowth snapping beneath her tiny feet. 

When she was gone, Charlie seemed to deflate, slouching to sit at the edge of the tent.

“She knows, doesn’t she?” Hermione said.

Charlie just sighed.

“She knows we haven’t -- consummated her marriage rite. And she’s cross with you over it. Isn’t she?”

Charlie chuckled. “Yes, I think that’s fair to say. Come sit and have something to eat.” He flipped the lid of the basket open. “And be sure to turn around and take a look at the nest.”

What kind of creature was Doamna Marius, that she could make Hermione forget for a moment that she was in the presence of a dragon? Behind her was a mass of splintered trees, torn out of the ground, their roots and branches tangled together to form a nest for Ela and the egg she would lay. The structure was massive, held together with moss and mud and ash. It was bigger than it needed to be. Ela looked a little lost but still content as she trembled in her sleep inside it.

Hermione raised a hand to her throat. “They made that? The dragons? It’s amazing.”

“It must have been him that built it for her, working on the instincts of a much bigger creature,” Charlie said. “The iron-belly might not be as dangerous to her as we thought. Or he might be worse. Who can say? At any rate, size isn’t the only way it doesn’t suit her. The broken trees are set in the concentric spike pattern of an iron-belly. I’m surprised she even recognizes it as a nest. But look at her in there. She’s accepted it, spikes and all.”

Hermione let herself fall to sitting beside him. “Do you really think she can survive this? Looking at her in that iron-belly nest is making it all so real and -- I just don’t know.”

Charlie sighed heavily as he opened a crock of steaming stew. “None of us knows. Bogdan and I talked about giving her an ova-ectomy to break the egg up inside her and extract it surgically but Doamna Marius lost her mind over that. And she is right that there’s enough of a chance Ela will survive that it may be worth letting it run its course. The grim fact is that if we wait, even if we can’t save her, we can at least get the egg away safely.”

Hermione scoffed. “And that’s what Doamna Marius really wants. That’s what she planned on all along, isn’t it?” 

“We don’t know that,” Charlie said. “It’s not impossible, but it’s too early to accuse her. We’ll see if anyone turns up tonight to try to claim the egg. Doamna Marius seems to want both of us here, for some reason. That’s the bit that doesn’t fit the theory that she wants the offspring for herself.”

Hermione sighed, accepting the spoon Charlie passed her along with a warm bowl full of stew. If only she knew more about the settlement’s society, who everyone here was and what they wanted, who they were loyal to, she might be able to better see how this all hung together.

Charlie went on, softly, cautiously. “If the offspring is opal-eyed, we’ll have new research to do, on the effects of its tears on memory -- on Muggles.”

Hermione dug her spoon into her bowl without eating. “And then I could benefit from Ela’s death. It’s mad, but something about that makes me feel as if I did this to her myself.”

“That is mad,” Charlie agreed.

“I know. But I can’t help it.” She set her bowl on the ground. “I would never torture a living dragon like this, especially not this one to whom I owe my own life. She saved me, and Ron and Harry and by extension the outcome of the whole war. Even if I knew it could help my parents, I’m not sure I could have hurt her -- “

“And everyone knows that,” Charlie finished for her, setting her bowl back in her hands. “Hopefully we save both Ela and the offspring and find a potion we can use to help your parents. But if she doesn’t make it, it’s better you benefit from it than whoever set her up for this. There are worse endings we could have than that.”

Hermione hummed. “Endings. We seldom get everything we want in the end. You know that. We can beat Voldemort and still lose Fred.”

Charlie hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her close enough to kiss her temple. “Have something to eat, love. Whatever happens to Ela, it’s not your fault, and we’re going to make sure no more harm comes to her.”

“We?” she said, pulling back. “You want me to stay here tonight?”

“Never mind what I want. Didn’t you see?” Charlie said. He reached into the pack and pulled out Hermione’s small, extendible bag. “Doamna Marius packed this too. She must have rounded up your things and thrown you out of the witches’ bunkhouse. Now you have nowhere to stay but with me.”

“That nosy old -- “

He clamped his hand over her mouth. “Don’t,” he said, smirking but peering out into the trees to see if they were truly alone all the same. “Don’t speak any more ill of her. Don’t risk it.”

As the night went on, they ate, watched the dragon, and lay side by side on their stomachs on the floor of the tent discussing the recommendations they’d make for the Ministry’s white paper. When Charlie plucked the quill out of her hand to jot down a note, he yelped at the coldness of her fingers.

“Sorry, I should have built a fire hours ago,” he said, sitting up to get to work.

She tossed her head, tore a blank page out of her notebook, and conjured a little flame from it herself, its edges flashing orange with warm embers, like the ones the boys used to like her to leave around their big traveling tent. “There. Now back to work, Weasley.”

Charlie reached toward the flame, testing how close he could come to touching it before he felt its burn. “Well, that’s lovely. Gives you a rather fetching glow too. Your hair looks positively orange in this light, like proper hair should.”

She laughed and shoved at him.

“But is it actually warming us?” he asked. “Feels as if I could hold it in my hand and not be hurt.”

Hermione grabbed his hand before he could try it. She was getting used to the feel of them, so much rougher with work and scars than the hands she had once been used to. She laced her fingers through his as she said, “Oh, give over. It’s plenty warm. I’ve used these flames to heat tents loads of times before.”

“This isn’t a proper tent Doamna Marius has left us though, is it,” he said, waving his free arm through the open space where a fourth wall ought to be. “And it’s just going to get colder. There might even be frost again.”

“Well, what else is in the pack?” she said. “She must have left us something to wrap up in while we lie here on guard all night. A sleeping bag or whatnot. Doamna Marius is pushy, not sadistic. Right?”

The pack held mostly food and some candles they could burn once the paper went out. Inside, as Charlie said, was Hermione’s personal bag, which contained her own clothing and supplies and several enormous legal books. At the bottom of the pack, they found a large quilt, and in the space where they hoped to find a second one was nothing but a dragon flame extinguisher. It was a piece of equipment identical, of course, to one Charlie had already been carrying in his own pack.

He lifted one eyebrow. “I don’t mind sharing the blanket if you don’t.”

“Of course I don’t mind sharing,” she said, whipping the blanket out of his hands and rising to her knees next to where he sat, draping it over his shoulders. “What I do mind is being manipulated, especially by someone I don’t trust. Someone who takes advantage of my language deficits, and of your good respectful nature...”

She went on about Doamna Marius, braced for Charlie to hush her again, or give some reason why the old witch might not be as bad as she seemed. Nothing came. Charlie kept quiet, looking at her, their eyes level as he sat and she knelt tucking him into the blanket with meticulous care. 

His expression was no ordinary look -- not his usual kindness or friendliness, not his look of worry or concentration. He looked as if he was struck with wonder, slightly pained by it, barely able to contain something.

Her hands stopped fussing over him and fell to her sides. “Darling? What is it?”

Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing, closing it again.

She held his face between her hands. “Are you alright? Are you jinxed? Doamna Marius -- she hasn’t sneaked back and -- “

“No,” Charlie said. “She’s not here. It’s just -- you. I want to tell you something. Something that came to me on our flight from Oradea.”

She let go of his face, her voice low and serious. “Then tell me.”

Charlie swallowed, still regarding her with that look like he was about to fly apart. What would she say if he told her he’d fallen in love with her, after years of friendship, one spark long ago, and then these two headlong days as her Carpathian husband? Did it make any sense? He knew she cared for him, but how much of that had to do with Ron, and her missing father? 

But even if their connection was complicated by all of that, did that mean it wasn’t real?

She hooked one finger into his palm, taking his hand again. Her voice was softer this time, but still ever so slightly afraid. “What is it, Charlie?”

He cleared his throat. He could not keep his feelings unspoken forever. But he could wait, let her have the rest of the night to think about a future together, as they’d already agreed. And so he said, “I remembered something. I remembered the first time we spoke to each other.”

Her tense posture slackened and she sat back on the ground. “You remember asking me to tell Ron and Harry to stop dawdling and get to the port key on the last day of the Quidditch World Cup?”

Charlie laughed. “Fine. I remember the second time we spoke then.”

“When you barely touched me on the shoulder and asked me to let you pass by me in the hallway at Grimmauld Place when we were all arriving there for our summer holidays?”

“No,” he said, lunging forward to grab her and pull her into his lap, folding her inside the blanket with him. “I remember when you asked me at Harry’s birthday party how I could tell Hagrid’s dragon, the one he called Norbert, was actually a female. And I gave some flip answer about females being more vicious.”

She clucked her tongue. “Oh, yes. I definitely remember that.”

“The look you gave me when I said it,” Charlie shook his head, whistling softly, gathering her closer, arranging the ends of the blanket to cover her all the way to her feet. “Scathing. Petrifying. I could see I was about to get a full lecture on the perils of sex-based over-generalizations -- “

“And you would have deserved it -- “

“Too right. I had to look away and make up some excuse about wondering what was keeping Dad so late at the office.”

She laughed at him, nestling into his arms and tipping the back of her head into his shoulder to look up into his face. “Well, at least you knew you were being stupid.”

“I did,” he said, looking out to where the dragon slept in the dark. “It wasn’t even true, as our iron-belly has so aptly demonstrated for you today. Norberta laid an egg, an unfertilized one. That’s how we know. It was just a stupid joke like the older men around here still like to make. I was too proud and stunned to apologize for it at the time, so I’m doing it now.”

She laid her hand on his cheek directing his eyes to hers. “I forgive you. For the most awful thing you have ever done to me. A careless word from five years ago. I forgive you.”

Her hand slid from his cheek to the back of his neck, pulling his face toward her. He came, but slowly, watching her expression. Under his gaze, she felt her face changing, taking on a look she knew from seeing it in his face moments before. She felt open, struck with something, barely able to hold herself together. And as she took this look on herself, this rushing, crashing feeling, she knew what Charlie had wanted to tell her. It was not a memory about Norbert the dragon. 

What he truly wanted to say was that he loved her. Even though he hadn’t actually said it, she felt it so strongly it overwhelmed her, like a revelation. And it was made complete by her conviction that she was in love with him in return. 

The thought had barely crystallized in her mind when his face was near enough to kiss. His lips nipped at hers, warm in the cold night, wet enough to seal themselves to hers. They came together. Stars, this was her husband, her loved one for the rest of her life.

Without breaking their kiss she turned herself around, their stomachs and chests pressed together, her legs behind her, toes braced against the ground. She pushed and he let himself sink to the floor of the tent, his hands on her waist as she lay on top of him. As she came forward, her jacket rode up and his hands were on her skin, cool and rough. A tiny moan sounded in her throat and her hands were tearing through the layers of his jacket and shirt, frantic to touch him with nothing in the way. 

And why not? He was hers. It didn’t matter if being with him like this, in every way that came after it, would make it more difficult for her to leave him later. She didn’t want to go.

He wasn’t letting her go, his fingers gripping her more tightly, pressed to her skin, ranging higher, up the curve of her waist, until he was twisting beneath her, rolling her onto her back and kissing her from above. He pulled back, as if to take a breath, and she was about to speak his name when he sat up and away.

Hermione gave a little cry of fury. “For the love of Boggarts, Charlie. What is it now?”

He sucked in a great breath. “It’s that behemoth of a magical reptile tossing and turning in a nest over there,” he said. He turned back to her, sorry and smoothing her hair out of her face with the hand she wanted back inside her clothes. “We need to think,” he said. “What if someone did set us up like this so we’d be here but wind up -- erm -- too busy to notice if something happened to Ela tonight? It doesn’t take a genius to know it’s easier to sit and wait for us to get distracted than to concoct some reason to keep us away from here.”

Hermione sat up, shoving at him, frustrated in every way. “Oh, so now you accept that Doamna Marius is manipulative and can’t be trusted?”

“I didn’t say that. All I -- ”

The rest of his words were lost. Not far off, beyond Ela’s nest, was a sound Hermione hadn’t heard since the Triwizard Tournament. It was the full, screeching, flaming cry of a fully grown dragon in open air.

Charlie swore as he scrambled to his feet.

Ela was stirring in her nest, pushing herself upright, leaning over the spiked edge of the nest, calling back, the air around her bright with flame, the force of her call straining at the egg in her gut.

Charlie didn’t have to explain the sound. It was the iron-belly. He was here, knowing that his mate was in their nest, all his instincts raging at him to break through the wards and protect her and the offspring. He was thrashing his body against the magical barrier, tearing at it with his teeth and claws, roaring fire at it. Either he would break through and wreak havoc on them, or he would dash himself against the wards until he was unconscious, or maybe worse.


	8. Eight

The iron-belly dragon came rampaging through the dark woods on the night his little mate went to their nest to lay their egg. All of his instincts raged at him to break through the wards keeping him outside her enclosure, to protect her and their offspring. He was thrashing his body against the magical barrier, tearing at it with his teeth and claws, roaring fire at it. Either he would break through and wreak havoc on every human inside, or he would dash himself against the wards until he was unconscious, or maybe worse.

Charlie was on his feet in front of the tent where he and Hermione had camped for the night, his eyes darting between the pair of howling, flaming dragons, both of them furious but also in danger. If he could only save one, it would have to be Ela, the opal-eye. While she was still gravid, she was more like two dragons than one, and her egg might hold a creature that could restore the Grangers’ charmed memories. He rushed to the nest of broken trees and roots, looking for footholds to climb into it to soothe Ela with a spell, to get her to stop straining so she wouldn’t injure herself as she laid her egg.

Hermione understood and moved to run to the Iron-belly, not knowing how she could work a spell to soothe him without slashing open the wards and having him rush in on them with fury and destruction.

Without having to see her go, Charlie sensed her reaction to the Iron-belly’s danger and stopped his climb, shouting back at her over his shoulder. "Hermione, no. You can’t handle a raging Iron-belly on your own.”

“I can’t just stand here -- “

“You have to. You saw what he did to me this morning, and he wasn't even angry then. If it hadn't been for Bogdan -- ”

“Then call him. Call Bogdan! Where’s your coin?"

"Too unreliable," Charlie said, finishing his clambering up the side of the nest. “Just wait.” From where he stood on the edge of the nest, and with a shout and a flourish, he produced a Patronus. It wasn't a weasel. It wasn't a dragon either but something mythic all the same, breathing cool white silvery fire as it bounded once around the nest and galloped off through the woods toward the settlement on four massive, feline legs.

It took a moment for Hermione to understand what she was seeing. "Chimera," she said, aloud but breathless. 

Charlie's patronus had the body of a lion and three heads: the fire breathing lion's head, a goat’s, and at the end of its tail, a snake's. Leave it to Charlie to not be able to settle on just one animal, even in his purest magic. His chimera was off to deliver a message to Bogdan, spoken in Romanian he could understand.

Hermione couldn’t stand in place wondering at it for long. The Iron-belly still crashed and wailed, making the usually gossamer wards flash starkly visible with green light in the dark forest. She’d lost sight of Charlie as his head disappeared inside the nest. Ela’s frantic, fiery howling had subsided, fading into loud, mournful cries that were pathetic as they were terrifying. 

Hermione was all but alone -- for now. In a moment, the Iron-belly would be with them. The flashing in the wards had taken on a shaking, stuttering rhythm, like a fluorescent lightbulb about to burn out. 

She clenched her wand, climbed onto a stump to make herself look bigger, and braced for the dragon’s entrance. Somehow, she would fight to subdue it, to protect Charlie from it, perilously positioned as he was between the Iron-belly and its family.

Then there was shouting behind her. It was Bogdan arriving on a broom, calling to her in Romanian, repeating a single word over and over.

“Bogdan, slower. I don’t understand -- “

He called the word out one more time, flinging his wand arm toward the Iron-belly. The flashing in the wards slowed its irregular stammer as a stream of red magic shot from his wand. He waved his free hand at Hermione. And she understood just as well as if he’d spoken in English: get your wand up and say the word, the incantation. This is the spell. She did as he said, joining her stream with his, hollering a spell in an old Dacian dialect no one but casting wizards used anymore. Bogdan cheered, his head thrown back.

After a moment the wards were almost steady, flickering only slightly, but still visible, green with failing light. It was working. Hermione glanced at Bogdan, laughing. He nodded as he took a step closer to the dragon. She moved to follow but he raised his hand, holding her back as he continued his advance on the Iron-belly. 

After catching its breath, the dragon had renewed it’s thrashing attack on the barrier. All at once, Hermione knew. They weren’t stopping the dragon. They were merely holding it, and they wouldn’t be for much longer. Between the red glow of the wizards’ magic and the green flare of the wards was a spot of white light. The wards were already breached. The dragon was coming.

Bogdan approached the creature all the same. 

“Bogdan, no,” she said. “Wait! Wait until Charlie finishes in the nest. He'll come help us. No.”

He was ignoring her though, like her, he must have known exactly what she meant to say whether it was in his own language or not.

“Bogdan, wait!”

They weren’t alone anymore. Two other figures had appeared, coming out of the darkness behind them, their wands lit. The first one, tumbling to the ground as she dismounted a broom, but springing up unhurt, was Doamna Marius. She looked as she always did, frail and ancient. But in her movements, all signs of her age were gone. She stood between Hermione and Bogdan and added her red stream to theirs.

The old crone’s sudden appearance was surprising but Hermione accepted it, grateful. What was harder to fathom was the identity of the fourth person to add a stream of magic to the spell Bogdan had begun. Hermione recognized the man’s face as he stepped into the light. It was Marius, the man she'd been told was a squib. He was suddenly magically powerful, standing taller than she’d ever seen him, and giving the spell the push it needed to lay the Iron-belly flat on its back, stupefied.

As the creature fell, Bogdan rushed forward, sealing the rift torn into the wards. He collapsed to his knees, panting. Marius and Doamna Marius hurried to see to him. He still had strength enough to hold Marius by the legs, shouting up at him, batting at the wand in his hand. No doubt he was demanding an explanation.

For a moment, Marius said nothing. Doamna Marius was rooting through the pockets of her worn calico apron. She found a flask and passed it to her son, letting him swig from it before clawing it back to drink from it herself.

Bogdan released Marius’s legs, falling back to sit on the ground. Even through his clothes, Hermione could see Marius’s body pulsing, swelling and shifting. It was familiar. She’d seen it before. She’d seen it in herself.

“Polyjuice,” she said.

Bogdan knew it too, and he rose to stand beside her, his wand raised in defense, not knowing who the imposters might be.

But Hermione was no longer afraid. In front of them, where Doamna Marius and her son had been just a moment before, stood Bill and Fleur Weasley.

She made a noise between a cheer and a sob as she recognized them. 

“Where’s Charlie?” was what Bill said by way of greeting.

Bogdan gestured to his own hair, then at Bill's. "Weasley?"

"Yes," Hermione nodded. "Weasley. This way, Bill.” 

She led them to the nest, Bogdan already scrambling up ahead of her. He reached the top of the ridge first, raising a hand again to hold everyone back.

Below them lay a massive grey egg, streaked with red dragon’s blood. Ela’s tail was tucked around it to keep it warm, but it lay in a limp way that made it look as if it had been Charlie who had arranged her this way. He stood at her head, his hand on her snout, stroking her scaly face with firm, sure strokes. Beside him, the dragon’s chest rumbled like a bad combustion engine. Over its rattle, Charlie crooned softly to her, praise and comfort.

Hermione couldn’t tell if Bogdan was swearing or praying but his heart was clearly broken. Charlie looked up at the sound, light flashing off the haze of tears over his eyes. From his position, he saw four human outlines in the dark. He was expecting Bogdan and Hermione and beckoned them down into the nest.

“Lean on the egg,” he told the four of them, hardly glancing away from the dragon. “Opal-eyes hatch quickly after laying. Almost like they’re viviparous. Keep it warm. Help her.”

Without a word, the four of them pressed their bodies to the egg, Charlie stayed at Ela’s head. Time passed in a miserable tense silence, as they stood listening to her slow, pained breath, no one speaking a word.

At last Bill said, “How long do you reckon until the other one wakes up?”

Charlie’s head snapped up. “Who said that?”

“Charlie, it’s me,” Bill answered. “We’ve been here since before Hermione came, staying with Marius. Fleur is here too.”

“What -- “

“Never mind it for now,” Bill said. “Just let me know what needs to happen to keep Mr. Dragon from bursting in here.”

Charlie shook his head. “Bogdan will know.” Words passed between Charlie and Bogdan in Romanian until they both seemed satisfied.

Low as all the voices were, at the sound of them, Ela stirred, her body shifting, moving the egg and all the humans pressed to it.

“Steady, Ela darling,” Charlie said.

Hermione could hardly look at him, but she couldn’t look away either. Had she thought earlier today that she loved Charlie Weasley? She must have but it was a modest love compared to how she felt about him now, as he knelt by a dragon head the size of her torso, willing strength and health into the beast with his care for it.

“Charlie, what can we do for her?” she said.

“Just wait,” he said. “I hit her with spell after spell to prevent her prolapsing during delivery. I don’t think she could take any more right now.” 

His voice was a low monotone, scared but grave. Hermione’s chin quivered and she might have begun to cry if Fleur hadn’t let out a chirp and jumped backward, away from the egg. On the shell, beneath where she’d been leaning, a crack was forming. Bogdan gasped and pulled everyone away, pointing to the upper rim of the nest, motioning for them all to climb out. He came last himself, glancing over his shoulder, shouting.

“Weasley!”

Charlie glanced up at him and back at Ela. A second crack was etching through the shell of the dragon egg. No one knew for sure what was coming out, just that whatever it was would be ravenous for a first meal. It wouldn’t be safe for any of them to be near it until it had eaten its fill of raw meat.

“Charlie, come on out,” Bill said. “If you think I won’t go back in there to get you even if it eats us both alive, you’ve got another thing coming.”

He believed him, and it was enough to send Charlie climbing out, slowly, as if he was suddenly very heavy. Bill and Bogdan hauled on his wrists to boost him up onto the rim. Hermione ducked underneath his arm to hold him up. She caught him with her hand against his heart.

Together, the five of them watched as the cross-breed baby dragon revealed itself. Shards of broken egg fell away, like the shattering of a huge ceramic urn. It crackled and squeaked apart until the newborn creature lay curled in the fragments. Bogdan turned up the light from his wand, tracking to where everyone assembled was most interested: to its eyes. Its lids were low, the wet corneas beneath barely visible. The baby crept along Ela’s body, to the warm spot over her heart.

Ela was weak, fading, but her instincts were strong. She tucked her long neck against herself, and the end of her snout came to rest against the baby’s face. It nuzzled into her, testing her impenetrable hide to see if it could eat her, settling back into her warmth when I knew it couldn’t. Slowly, Ela’s pointed tongue slipped from between her jaws and licked the last of the yolk from the baby’s face and back, its long spiny tail and papery wings.

Fleur uttered a delicate little sob and hid her face in Bill’s shoulder. “Oh, it’s trying so hard to mother the little monster. It's too much. How can we bear it?”

In its mother’s care, the baby dragon uncoiled itself, its eyes blinking, widening.

“Opal-eye,” Charlie said, his breath rushing out in relief.

Bogdan elbowed Charlie in the arm, speaking with low, quiet enthusiasm. Charlie nodded, slowly at first, gaining speed.

“Da?” Bogdan said.

“Da,” Charlie agreed. 

Hermione let go of him and crouched on the top of the nest, peering inside it. “What’s happening, Charlie? Ela -- her tail, her neck -- the muscle tone is returning. It looks almost as if...”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m not sure, but I think the baby’s yolk might be restorative. It can serve as another dragon-borne potion sometimes, especially between dragons of different breeds. And these two might be just different enough to -- “ He stopped. “Listen! Listen to Ela’s breathing!”

The bad engine sound was clearing, becoming more like an efficient burn, less like a rattle.

Bogdan hopped down from the nest, back into the forest, trotting toward the tent to where Charlie had left the pack containing the baby’s first meal.

“Right,” Charlie said once Ela's breath found its rhythm. “She looks like she's coming out of it thanks to the baby’s yolk. If Ela doesn’t need us any more tonight, we can leave. We should leave. And once we do, there’s no more reason to keep the Iron-belly out. Bogdan and I will feed the baby. Ela too, if she’ll take anything. Hermione love, can you clear the campsite?”

“Of course.”

“Good. When you’re all clear, we’ll open the wards, and let him through. And then, Bill -- then I think the four of us will have some air to clear.”

\---------------------------------------

At the settlement, the Weasley brothers and their wives sat in Charlie’s room. The real Doamna Marius and her son had met them there, laughing now that the trick had been revealed, hugging everyone, congratulating them on the safe arrival of Ela’s hatchling. 

Doamna Marius was positively doting on Fleur, stacking pastries on the table for her to nibble at. Who could fail to love a beautiful girl who had troubled herself to learn Hungarian to rebel against her boring English lessons? 

But there was still coldness between the old witch and Hermione. Her suspicions that Doamna Marius had let the Iron-belly into Ela’s enclosure in the first place were stronger than ever. And what any of it had to do with Bill and Fleur was still a mystery, leaving her uneasy.

When the four of them were finally alone, Bill took a deep breath, and Fleur settled into his lap as he began. "Gringotts,” he said. “This trouble with the dragons is all down to Gringotts. I found out they’d sent a team here to breach these wards when I was working late one night in an anteroom to the newly repaired boardroom. Apparently, it still needs its silencing charms cast manually. Well, someone forgot and I got an earful."

"Goblins did this?" Hermione asked, disbelieving. “Are you sure, Bill? They’re blamed for so much. So often it's hardly fair -- “

"No, I said Gringotts, not goblins. The bank’s board of directors has more wizards than goblins when you get to the top. It reads rather like a roster of old Death Eater ranks. You know the families," Bill said, pausing to sniff Fleur’s hair. "The war, You-know-who -- it was never about purity for most of the Death Eaters, just money. That hasn't changed."

"What about the dragons?" Charlie pressed.

"Well, that all springs from the new regulations on Veratiserum," Bill resumed. "It’s a controlled substance now, making it hard for the bank to get hold of enough of it to do business like they're accustomed to. Employee fraud and theft are huge problems, and a dose of Veratiserum and a stern questioning were part of the daily routine for anyone working below ground at the bank."

Hermione was frowning. "So looking for a Veratiserum replacement, someone found out about the old, obsolete dragon anti-occlumency potion and wanted to use it to interrogate bank workers instead?"

Bill tipped his head back and forth. "Well, yes and no. Once the bank’s board learned about the anti-occlumency potion, they could see how it could be applied more broadly than to just keeping the help honest.”

Fleur took it over. “They weren’t happy just to keep the riches they had. No, no. They wanted to use the dragon potion to get more.”

Charlie was nodding now. “Yes, with that potion, every password, the location to every hidden treasure trove, every secret household vault would be one clumsy bout of legilimency away from being revealed to whoever had a supply of it. The only thing keeping the bank from all of that would be the pesky fact that the Ural opal-eye supply of it is currently extinct -- ”

“But not if the bank could help it,” Bill smirked. “Some clever capitalist remembered the little New Zealand opal-eye that flew off during the war. They were furious all over again to have lost her, and while I listened through the door, they congratulated each other on their collective vow not to take it sitting down anymore. Especially not when they knew exactly where their former guard-dragon had found refuge.”

Hermione was grumbling. “So they didn't have the cheek to demand Ela back, but they felt justified in risking her life by sending a vandal down here to slash the wards and cross her with the dragon who might produce the offspring they wanted?” Her voice had risen to the level of a shout as she’d spoken. “That is absolutely horrendous. And they don't even know if this new baby’s tears will work as an anti-occlumency potion. How could they gamble like that?"

Bill shrugged. "They already lost control of the dragon. Figured they had no more to lose."

She shivered. "Awful."

Fleur tossed her head. “Aren’t you and Charlie a pair. Fussing over animals this way.”

Bill hushed her, speaking to her nose-to-nose. "Darling, that dragon saved Hermione’s life during the war. You remember.”

“Oh, I forgot that,” she said, kissing Bill lightly on the mouth before turning back to Charlie and Hermione. "She had better be a special beast. Do you know what Bill did when he heard the awful people of the bank say all of this? No, you don't. He told them ‘no.’ Stop! They threatened to sack him if he didn't keep their secret but he didn't care, did you Bill? That night, he fought his way out of the bank while they chased him with memory modifying spells. He escaped to tell the Aurors and, as you can see, the awful Gringotts people never came back here. They are so watched and pestered now, they can’t."

Charlie and Hermione were stunned to hear it. “Bill,” Charlie stammered, “that’s all very -- thank you.”

“Yes, well…” Bill trailed off.

"And you left the bank?" Charlie marveled. “On bad terms?"

Bill smirked. "The worst. But it's alright. I never loved the bank, just the rare coworker I found there," he said, brushing the end of his nose against Fleur's cheek. "The kids are old enough for all of us to go abroad now. So I've got a new situation in Egypt starting soon."

Charlie was taken further aback. "Well -- that’s brilliant. Mum’s sure to hate it but -- ”

Fleur groaned into Bill's neck. “Go make your mother happy yourself then, Charlie Weasley.”

“Where are your kids right now, anyway?" Hermione interrupted. “Polyjuiced somewhere around here too?”

"No, at the cottage with Ronald and Gabrielle," Fleur said. "It's the least they can do, after all."

“I still don’t understand,” Charlie said. “Why didn’t you just tell me who tampered with the wards as soon as you knew, Bill? Why disguise yourselves as Marius and his mother and sneak around for days?”

Bill and Fleur exchanged looks, slow grins, almost wicked. 

“And now we come to the good part,” Fleur said. “Now, my sister, she is very bad. But so is your brother,” she said, raising one finger to point at both of the Weasleys.

Bill was agreeing. “Hermione, you must know we never would have brought Gabrielle into the country if I’d known it would end your engagement -- “

“Stop,” she said. “I appreciate your goodwill, Bill. But it was better I found out about Ronald’s -- weaknesses last year rather than well into a marriage with children and whatnot. As your mother would say, you did me a great favour.”

“Favour,” Fleur echoed. “Well, then maybe we didn’t go to all this trouble for you. Maybe we did it for ourselves, to feel better about what happened. A broken heart is like a death. We all feel the sorrow. You are a formidable woman, ma soeur, and you did not deserve to be treated as you have been by Ronald and Gabrielle.”

“Thank you, Fleur, but -- gone to trouble? What trouble?” Hermione pressed. “What exactly did you do for me?”

Bill chuckled, sounding almost like Charlie. “Well, since I’m between jobs, and what with us leaving for Africa soon, we wanted to set things right before we left. Make amends. Sweep things clean. And so, while we did indeed come to the settlement, hiding from Gringotts, intent on seeing that the breach in the wards was discovered, and that the dangerous cross-breeding was detected, that wasn’t the only reason. We wanted you to have a fresh start too, Hermione.”

“But,” Fleur added, “with someone cold and frozen to Veela mystique.”

Charlie startled in his seat, the wooden kitchen chair creaking. “What?”

“Watch me,” Fleur said, hopping out of Bill’s lap. She stood with her eyes closed, as if gathering energy. When she opened her eyes the air in the room was different, thick. She walked in a slow circle around Charlie’s chair, letting her hand drift entrancingly, enticingly down to his shoulder, dragging her fingertips across his back and collar bones as she circled, her chin tipped alluringly, her blazing eyes fixed on his face, a sway in her walk.

Bill held his stomach, staring at her, forcing himself to stay seated, not interfering though his expression was somewhere between angry, sick, and smitten.

Hermione was tensing herself, her eyes narrowing, fingers curling in her lap.

Of everyone in the room, Charlie seemed the most unfazed. He raised one eyebrow. “Whatcha doin,’ Fleur? You alright?”

She gave an exasperated sigh and snatched her hand away from his shoulder. “See, he’s useless. Some men are. I’m shocked to find one in my own husband’s family but -- you saw him, Hermione. Charlie doesn’t respond to me. He sees me as a magical creature, as work, research, and he’d no sooner run away with me than with a pigeon.” 

"Pigeons are lovely," Charlie said as she walked away. "Very intelligent. And sociable."

Fleur had made a tender offering: her pride. It hurt her to admit Charlie didn’t want her at all, and she sat down in Bill’s lap again to comfort herself. He clamped his arms around her waist and sunk his chin into her shoulder.

“Right. So you came here to match me up with Charlie?” Hermione said.

“Yes, obviously,” Fleur agreed. “I give you back what my family took from you. Here is the Weasley husband you wanted since I met you as a young girl. This is a better one for you. Take him.”

Charlie was holding his head. “So that marriage rite in the mess hall. That was performed by you, Fleur?”

“Oh no,” Fleur said. “I have no authority to perform marriages. That was the real Doamna Marius. She has helped us all along. And you are truly married to this magnificent woman, Charlie. But just in the Carpathians. If you both want to be married everywhere, you must sign this.” From her Doamna apron, she produced a parchment with two blank spaces at the bottom, room for each of their signatures. “Sign it and stay together. Or one of you can leave this region and it will be over. The choice is yours now.”

“The potion from the cross-breeded dragon’s eyes is yours too,” Bill said as Fleur stood up, tugging at his hand to join her. “If it can help your Muggle parents, Hermione, I hope you won’t hesitate to use it.”

“Yes, discuss your future. Decide on it. Make your plans,” Fleur said as she walked with Bill to the door. Her hand was on the doorknob when she turned for a final word. “And after your plans are made, make love to your wife, Charlie. She has been waiting too long.”

With that, the door closed and Charlie and Hermione were alone.

Hermione stood up, leaving her chair to cross the room to where their packs still lay on the bed. She was doing what she always did to cope when she was anxious, taking control of her environment, this time not by packing, but by unpacking. “Oh, I do hope I didn’t leave my bag by the nest,” she was saying. “I’m sure it’s in here somewhere. I’ll find it and -- “

“Can you believe that sister-in-law of mine?” Charlie was ranting. “Ordering us around like that, as if she hasn’t interfered enough -- “

Hermione found her bag and pulled it free of the pack. “Here it is,” she said, turning back to face the centre of the room. “I can -- “

Charlie was standing now, stepping toward her. “I’m through submitting to Mrs. Bill’s manipulation,” he said.

He was close now, standing in front of Hermione as, once again, she agonized over whether to leave this room or not. They'd been played by his family. Now they knew. But she didn’t know what to say to him. Her fingers clawed her bag and her voice fell to a husky whisper. “Charlie, I -- “

“Say it again,” he whispered back, his fingers clenched around her wrist, their imprints rough and hot.

“Charlie?”

He pulled her close, both his arms around her, her feet lifting off the floor.

"Charlie." 

She dropped her bag and slid her open hands over his shoulders, reclaiming him from that Veela’s touch. "Charles Prewett Weasley -- ” She voiced a gasp as he kissed the base of her neck. “Charlie.”

He spoke into her ear. “You can tell Fleur, I’m not waiting until after we’ve made our plans. If you’ll have me, Hermione, I’ll love you before all of that. I’ll love you now.”

She was relieved enough, happy enough to make a sound almost like a laugh against his throat. “Yes, Charlie.”

“Yes, Charlie what?” he said as he set her feet back on the ground but continued to hold her. “Yes, you’ll stay married to me? Here and everywhere?”

She barely left off kissing his jaw to say, “Everywhere, Charlie.”

He hummed, satisfied, turning them in a circle where they stood. “And you’re not staying because of polyjuice tricks, or dragons, or your parents, or mine, or Ron, or my Veela immunity, or -- “

“No,” she said. “Just because I love you.” She leaned away to see him. “But all those things are part of you, and so I love them too.”

He turned faster, almost in a spin. “Love you,” he whispered in answer as they moved.

“Are we dancing, Charlie?” she said. “If we sign that paper, that makes this like a second wedding day for us. Is this our wedding dance?”

“I suppose it is,” he said, his hand inside her jumper again, on her back, her spine arching to bring him closer. “We’ve danced at a wedding before, haven’t we?”

“Just once,” she said, stepping lightly on his feet with hers. “When I was barely of age and you were -- perfect.”

He had stopped moving, holding still to gaze at her upturned face. “I remember,” he said. “Of course I do.”

She laid a hand on his cheek, and spoke his name again. There it was, just as it had been as they leaned over a table in the library, the proof that even though Charlie did not respond to Veelas, it did not mean he was not capable of response.

Her hands found the bottom of his jumper and pulled it up, over his head and his raised arms. As she dropped it to the floor, she was already burying her face in his chest, in the light fuzz of ginger hair across his sternum and muscles. His breath was shaky, hungry as he palmed the back of her head and turned toward his bed, sinking on top of her. She lay back in the pillows as he kissed her face and mouth, as he descended along her neck, his hands on her, mirroring every touch she had given him.

She was trembling as he kicked the packs off the end of the bed and tugged the blanket free, covering himself and her with it as if her bare skin wasn’t burning, and might get cold.

“Charlie,” she said as he came closer to her, closer, closest.

\-------------------------------------------

No one came to rouse Charlie for work in the morning. The Iron-belly kept watch over its new family, and Charlie stayed with his. Hermione awoke with his face pressed against her back,the satisfying scratch of his whiskers on the skin between her shoulder blades. She purred and stretched and Charlie’s arms tightened around her. In the sunlight, she could see them, Charlie’s beautiful arms draped around her body.

“Still mine,” he murmured into the nape of her neck.

She turned to face him, her colour rising. “Everywhere.”

He growled another hello into her collarbone.

"You know," she said, "not even Harry Potter has a magical creature for a Patronus. Dumbledore, yes. But he's the only one I know."

Charlie smirked. "You liked the chimera then?"

"Yes," she said, her fingers in his hair. "Very much. Though not as much as some of your other hidden talents..."

After a while, they talked some more, planning as Fleur had said to. That they would extend their Carpathian marriage to the entire globe was settled, but there were details to discuss. Hermione would finish the Ministry white paper at the sanctuary, staying in Romania while they tested the properties of the baby dragon’s tears. If they got a good result, they would go on leave, to Australia, after her parents. If not, they would continue to look for a reversal to the memory charm somewhere else.

“Speaking of parents,” Charlie said, propped on one elbow, looking at her hair spread like a sunburst all around her, smoothing it with his fingers. 

“Yes, once we are parents, we should definitely name our first son Bogdan Marius Weasley,” Hermione finished for him.

Charlie laughed. “Yeah, alright. Anything but Malfoy.”

“Was that not what you were going to say?”

He kissed her cheek. “No, actually. I was going to say we should probably report this to Mum. Definitely before Fleur does.”

Hermione let out an immense sigh. “Molly’s going to think I’m a slag, working my way through her sons.”

“Nonsense. She’ll be nothing but delighted,” Charlie corrected her. “Do you know how many kids my dad had by the time he was my age? More than most people get in two generations, that’s how many. At age twenty-nine, Mum would be happy if I owled home to say I married a Hippogriff.”

Hermione huffed. “A hippogriff?” She shoved Charlie’s arm off of her stomach and back at him. “A hippogriff. Thank you, darling.”

“Oh, no. It’s ‘darling’ again is it? No more ‘Charlie?’”

“No, you have to earn that. Darling is free.”

“I’m sorry, love,” he said, gathering her against himself again, his face in her hair. “You’re not my hippogriff. Nothing like one. Except that you deserve to be bowed to.”

She smoothed his hair. “Seriously, Charlie. You are right. We will eventually have to face all of them in Britain.”

“You say it like it might not be nice,” he said. “It will be.”

“What if they make us get a wedding tent?” she said. “You know, a do-over since they missed our Hungarian mess hall ceremony. And what if they did it up with party favours from the joke shop? And one of your mother’s wedding haircuts for you? And between me and Arthur and Percy half the deadly dull Ministry staff turns up to snooze along in their folding chairs?”

He laughed into her shoulder. “Right. Let’s just stay here. The family can come see us if they want to, but they won’t.”

“It’s not that I don’t want the Weasleys as my family. I do. I always have. When we do see them again I’m sure it will be lovely but -- What I want more than anything is a different kind of Weasley family.” She held his jaw between her hands, tipping his forehead against hers, and speaking into his face. “I want this one.”


	9. Epilogue - 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for asking for an epilogue! Here is it. DDD

Hermione and Charlie Weasley were going back to Britain for Ron's wedding. They were leaving their three-month mountaintop honeymoon among the dragons and the people who knew them as the only Weasleys in the world. They weren’t the only Weasleys, not by a long shot. And they couldn’t deny it any longer.

And besides the wedding, Hermione’s research stay in Romania couldn't go on indefinitely. If she never went back to work at the British Ministry of Magic, she’d never get to file her report for the white paper on ethical care of dragons.

And finally, they needed help analyzing the baby opal-eye-iron-belly’s tears. Occlumency was a dying art outside of the pureblooded and wealthy and sneaky. Not even the chosen one had put in the work to learn to do it well. They needed to get back to their old Order of the Phoenix network to find Occlumens to test the tears before they could investigate their effects on Muggle memory.

“But it’s going to a different sort of visit,” Hermione told Charlie as she trimmed his hair at their tiny table, combing it with her fingers, looking for any singed bits. She didn’t want to row with Molly Weasley about the state of Charlie’s hair for a family wedding. But she would not sit quietly if Molly tried to give her beautiful husband another Muggle military cut. 

Charlie sat quietly hearing her out.

“I mean,” she resumed, “if we were to turn up at the Burrow and slot ourselves right back into our old spots at the kitchen table, it might not make a strong enough point about what's changed in the family. And if the fact that we’re sleeping in the same room now is the one thing that’s obviously different, it will make you and me seem strange and perverse. And we’re not. We’re lovely.”

“Yeah, we’re destiny,” Charlie agreed.

“Right,” she said. “And everyone will be able to see that better if they see us somewhere they’ve never seen us before. Some place completely different: my parents’ old house.”

The “Wilkins” had forgotten their old identities so thoroughly that they hadn’t remembered to sell their house when they left the country. The interior was ransacked by Death Eaters while Hermione was on the run. When the utilities went unpaid, they were soon shut off. But the taxes continued to be withdrawn automatically from the Grangers’ old account, and by the time the money ran out, Hermione was old enough to take over the payments herself. Before she’d come to Romania, the house was where she’d been living in London.

They apparated to it from the London International Port Key Authority. While Hermione ran up and downstairs, opening windows to clear out three months of stuffy early summer air, Charlie stood in the centre of the lounge, looking about as if he was in a museum.

His hands were still jammed in his pockets when Hermione returned. “Are you alright, darling?” she asked. “Are you feeling woozy? Was my apparation poorly done?”

“No, not at all,” he said, reaching for the one thing he felt confident in touching here -- her. “It just -- well, I’ve been in Muggle shops and businesses, in their train stations and that kind of thing. But never anyone’s house.”

Her shoulders fell, her posture sagging in Charlie’s arms, letting him hold her up. “It’s not much, is it.”

“No, it’s brilliant,” Charlie said. “Authentic Muggle habitat. Dad’s going to lose his mind for joy when he gets here. Ron must know his way around the place by now though. Harry too, I suppose.”

She bowed her head. “No, actually. I kept them away. Somehow it hurt, the thought of having them here. No one’s ever seen this place. Only you.”

Charlie understood, pulled her into his chest, and kissed the top of her head. “Thanks for bringing me, love.”

Her voice was hoarse as she answered. “Everywhere.”

She toured him through the house. He was quite taken with the light switches and the not-quite-magical electricity running invisibly through the walls, waiting to be called forth. Hermione warned him not to jab at the outlets with his wand.

The mechanical locks on the doors and windows were tricky. Hermione explained that they could also be opened magically, but he was determined to get the hang of their normal functions all the same.

The television was another fascination, of course, and he settled in quickly and not surprisingly to watching football.

“Oh, I’ve seen this before,” Charlie said, crouching in front of the screen to get a better look. “Children do it in fields. It’s interesting, I suppose, but I don’t understand why whenever these grown up blokes touch each other and the ball at the same time, one of them has to fall onto the grass howling.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’ll like rugby better than football. It’s more like quidditch. Slower but with loads of genuine injuries. If we were in Sweden or Russia, you might be able to find some hockey to look at. It’s quite a bit like quidditch, only instead of flying, they dart about on blades over ice.”

He snorted. “Now you’re having me on.”

She shoved at his shoulder. “I am not, Charlie. It’s called ice skating and it’s -- ”

“Where’s your room?” Charlie said, not interested in Muggle sports all of a sudden, rounding on her where she had sat beside him on the living room rug. He was crawling over her, and she lay back along the floor beneath him as he loomed over her on his hands and knees. 

She clicked at a clunky, black, wand-like object and the television went dark and silent. “My room? My bedroom?” She linked her hands around his neck, pulling him further down. “Are you sleepy, Charlie?”

He rumbled a low chuckled against her throat. “Sure. Now where’s your bed? Upstairs?”

“Yes. Aren’t you clever,” she wound her legs around his waist, using them to pull him even closer. “Upstairs is where you’ll find my childhood bed which, frankly, I don’t think is up to your -- erm -- fairly demanding requirements for sturdiness in a bed.”

“Shame,” Charlie said, his lips still on her throat, working her skin as she shivered around him. 

“But my parents’ old bed -- “

He broke out in a laugh.

“What?” she protested. “It’s not weird.”

“It’s a little weird.”

“Oh, give over. They haven’t lived here in years. The sheets don’t even smell like them anymore. And it’s a great bed. Very high quality, even by your exacting standards. Worthy of our -- um -- attention.”

Charlie was laughing harder, collapsing onto her on the plush rug. 

“It’s not weird, Charlie!” she said, rocking underneath him. “You are the first man I’ve ever brought here, and in so doing, I like to think that I’m starting a new life. One that’s not about a tragic past, but about me and you. The family I have now.”

He leaned on his elbows, sitting up slightly to look at her, not laughing anymore but looking at her with that hungry tenderness of his. “Of course, love. A new life, the best one. Anything you want.”

She ruffled his newly cut hair. “I don’t need much. I’d be happy with anything as a bed -- anything but spending our first night in England as a married couple getting off at the Burrow, across the hall from where I spent years of my life shagging that lanky, pasty -- “

“Fine,” Charlie said, one hand held lightly to her mouth. “I’m not arguing. I’ll sleep wherever you tell me. I am perfectly willing. In fact,” he clutched her and rolled over, lying on his back on the rug as she clung to his front with her arms and legs, “after this long day of traveling, I am absolutely gagging to sleep with you wherever and however you want.”

She slapped the rug beside his head with one hand before she sat up on his stomach, smirking. “Well then, it’s a good thing I Hoovered right before I left for Romania.”

“You what?” Charlie asked, glancing around the room as if helpless as she pulled the edge of his T-shirt from under herself, tugged it over his head, and threw it toward the kitchen.

“No need to stand up, Charlie Weasley. We can start our sleeping tour of this house right here.”

\---------------------------------

Afterward, Charlie was feeling much more at home in the dentists’ house. 

Hermione was in the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and muttering to herself. “Of course I can cook,” she’d said. “It’s just like potions and I’m brilliant at that.”

He sat up on the rug and reached for his clothes, thinking of the clock in the Burrow’s kitchen, and how the hand with his name on it would be pointing at “dentist” right now. Why had his father built it with a dentist section anyway? Some kind of Muggle-fan tribute. Dear old Dad.

While Hermione worked away on the Muggle kitchen equipment Charlie would figure out for himself later, he roamed the house, following a trail of photographs around the lounge, into the front hall, and up the stairs. 

He didn’t recognize anyone in them but soon came to see that most of the photos featured the same couple. There was a woman who held her mouth with the same prim, fastidious tension he saw in Hermione when she was trying hard to do something. And there was a man with tufty brown hair that was hardly orderly even when cut short. Charlie had a good idea what it would look like if it was grown out long.

The couple’s poses were odd, off-centre, awkwardly composed, as if something had been cut out. Ah, yes. It was still shocking for him, sometimes, to come to these realizations of how formidable his wife truly was. At age seventeen, her memory alteration spell had been powerful enough to remove her image from all her parents' pictures. Bloody hell, woman.

In the hallway upstairs, out of sight, the altered pictures were different. Some of the empty spaces beside the couple were smeared with tawny brown. In some, it was little more than a smudge, as if someone had touched them with a chocolatey fingerprint. In others, the effect was stronger, and the couple was crowded by a tangle of brown, like a rowdy pet had bolted through the frame as the photo was taken. 

Charlie raised his finger to touch one of the spots. These were lasting traces of Hermione’s experiments with bringing herself back to her parents. She had tested her counter-charms on these photos. And so far, the results had not been good.

He returned to the kitchen, where Hermione stood scraping something vile from a plastic tub into a hole at the bottom of the sink. He embraced her from behind, his arms around her waist, stooping to kiss her jaw. 

She laughed softly. “What is it now, Charlie? Are you alright? You didn’t trifle with the electricity, did you?’

He didn’t return the laugh but spoke into her ear. “I just missed you. So much. Promise you’ll never send me away. Even if you think I’ll die if you hold onto me, don’t send me away.”

She turned in his arms, understanding that the longer they stayed here, the more the loss of her parents became real to him. And the more it broke his heart as well as hers. Her palm cradled his cheek. “I will never make that kind of mistake again. I promise.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Don’t be too sad for me, Charlie. Remember. I don’t want our new life to be tragic.”

He shook his head, his nose brushing hers. “What is that awful smell?”

She gasped and turned back to the sink, running the water and turning on the motor in the garbage disposal. “Everything in the fridge has gone off. I can’t cook for you tonight.”

Charlie hummed. “Can you get a pizza owl in a Muggle neighbourhood?”

She laughed and squeezed him tight. “Something like that.”

\-----------------------------

Three days before Ron and Gabrielle’s wedding, the entire Weasley family met for a mass dinner at the Grangers’ house in London. No one had been there before so the guests were to navigate by car, a whole fleet of magical cars they assumed would blend seamlessly into Muggle society. 

They would not. 

To keep peace in the neighbourhood, Charlie and Hermione cast silencing and concealment charms on the house and garden. Because this was a Hermione project, all the food was ready, warming in trays or chilling in the refrigerator, with a full hour to spare before any guests were expected.

“Right,” she said, untying her apron and hanging it on the pantry door. “I’m ready. How are you, darling? Excited to host your first family reunion?”

Charlie pushed himself away from the counter, answering her sarcasm with cheek. “I’m a bit tired, honestly.” He crossed the room and dropped his arms on each of her shoulders, joining his hands behind her head. “You know, feeling sleepy.”

She closed her eyes and turned her head to rub her face against his forearm. “That won’t do. Good thing we’ve got time for a quick sleep before anyone gets here.”

He had walked her backwards, into the kitchen table. Even when the back of her legs touched it, and she couldn’t walk any further, he kept advancing. “This table is much bigger than the one we have at the settlement. Don’t you think?”

“It is,” she said, letting herself settle back on it as Charlie leaned over her. “And I think it’s sturdy enough to hold us up.”

“I wonder,” Charlie said, easing his torso to lie on hers, his feet still standing on the floor. “Yes, good strong construction,” he murmured against her collar bone. “And out of solid hardwood.”

His hands were on her thighs, pulling them up around his hips. Her eyes had drifted closed, and even if she'd opened them, she wouldn’t have seen anything in the room that wasn’t Charlie. Their breaths were heavy enough as he kissed her senseless on the tabletop that they didn’t hear the clasp of the kitchen door clicking open. They didn’t hear the stifled gasps of surprise either -- nothing until someone swore.

Charlie dropped Hermione’s legs and pulled her off the table, her long full skirt falling modestly back into place as he stood her in front of himself. There in the kitchen with them, having taken it upon themselves to come early to help set up for the party were Arthur, Molly, and Ron.

Charlie coughed. “Mum, Dad -- hiya.” 

Hermione turned to cast a quick Scourgify over the table. “Hello everyone. Ron. Welcome.”

Molly could only nod in reply, nearly but not quite smiling, speechless, her hands wrapped in oven mitts holding a crock of something. It was one thing to get an owl announcing Charlie was married to the once and former love of Ronald’s life. It was quite another to see -- this.

Ron was quiet too, red-faced and looking like he’d rather be doing more swearing.

Arthur closed his hands in a single clap. “Charlie, Hermione, welcome back,” he said. “Yes. You are back, aren’t you. You said you’d come for the wedding, and here you are. The two of you. A pair. Meeting us here in this truly astonishing specimen of a Muggle domicile.”

Molly swatted at Arthur’s arm. “Never mind the house for now, dear. Hermione,” she said, coming forward with both her hands extended to take Hermione’s. “My darling girl, my daughter-in-law, welcome home.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Weasley.”

“Oh, stop,” Molly said. “Call me Mum, if you like. How’s that Charlie?”

“That -- that’s fine,” Charlie said, bending to take the crock from her as she smacked a kiss on his cheek.

Charlie and his mother settled her food offering on the buffet in the dining room. Arthur stood opening and closing the refrigerator door, trying to figure out how the light was coming on and off without magic. And Ron and Hermione’s eyes met across the kitchen.

She frowned at him. “What?”

“Oh, nothing at all. That’s how all my brothers’ families greet me,” Ron replied, waving at the table.

“Look, Ronald, at this point, you have got nothing to complain about.“

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I am not complaining. I’m adjusting. Sorry. I mean,” he moved to drape an arm across her shoulders and hugged her into his side, “I mean to say, congratulations, to you and Charlie. I’m sure it’s brilliant. And I’ll get used to it, but -- it’s a lot.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s everything to me.”

He swallowed. “That’s -- that’s good.”

“Electricity!” Arthur shouted. “I know it’s the electricity, I just don’t know how this door summons it.”

While Hermione showed Arthur the wonder of the refrigerator, Charlie was in the dining room scolding his mother for feeling like she had to cook something and fly it all the way into town.

“It’s lovely of you, Mum, but it’s not necessary. We’ve got lots. I can cook and so can Hermione.”

She scoffed. “Hermione cooks like she’s brewing potions, and it shows in the food. You can taste the maths.”

“Mum, that’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not. How long has she been cooking for you now? Three months? Maybe you’re used to it by now,” Molly said, eying the dishes steaming under their covers. “But you cannot look me in the eye and tell me her cooking is better than mine.”

Charlie blushed slightly.

“What? What is it?” Molly pressed.

He sighed. “The fact is, she’s never cooked for me before, nothing beyond tea and toast. We take our meals in a mess hall at the settlement. And there was no food here in the house last night so we had a man in a car bring us pizza. Today will be the first time I’ve really had her cooking.”

For the second time in fifteen minutes, Molly was dumbfounded. “Charles Weasley, you married someone who has never cooked for you?”

“Mum, I told you. The circumstances of our marriage were strange at first. And -- and what would it matter anyway? This is Hermione Granger herself I’ve managed to marry. The brightest witch of all time. People say that kind of thing about her, but they don’t know the half of it. I’d have stayed married to her if she fed me owl pellets and swamp water for dinner every night.”

Molly laid a conciliatory hand on his arm. “Charlie, dear -- “

“We are lucky to even know her,” he went on in a low but intense whisper. “You all met her as a child and take her for granted but -- and especially after what a certain member of our family has put her through, she doesn’t have to be here. I’m astounded by it, honoured -- “

“As am I,” Molly said, taking Charlie in her arms, stroking the back of his head as she hugged him. “I am too, my dear boy. I knew you must have been waiting all this time for someone special. And it is good to hear you defending her to the other witch in your life. Just as it should be.”

Charlie sat back. “Defending her? Mum, this was some kind of test? You’re seeing if I’d stick up for her?”

Molly patted his cheek. “There’s a good lad. Yes, of course. I couldn’t be more pleased with your wife. But,” she said, “do be sure to serve yourself a nice, hearty portion of my meatballs.”

Before Charlie could say anything more, Molly was calling Arthur out of the refrigerator. “Come into the lounge, dear. There’s one of those televisions you like out here.”

When the three visiting Weasleys were sat in the lounge, perplexed and transfixed by a football match on the television, Charlie and Hermione regrouped in the kitchen. She beat her head against his chest as he gathered her in his arms.

“Off to a roaring start,” he said.

She gave a pained laugh. “The worst possible reception.”

“Cheer up, love. It can’t get any worse,” he whispered into her face as he bent to kiss her.

He had nearly connected with her when someone was shouting from the kitchen door again. “Look at the canoodling newlyweds. It’s true! It’s all true.”

They broke apart to see George, baby Fred in his arms, Angelina at his elbow, coming through the door. He was followed by Harry who was supporting Ginny by the arm as if she was ill.

George forced himself, baby and all, between Hermione and Charlie. “Well done, Charlie. Well done. Welcome to the family for keeps this time, Granger.”

“Why are you all arriving so early?” Charlie said, palming the baby’s head.

Harry cleared his throat, stepping forward to let Hermione kiss his cheek. “We assumed we’d get lost on the way and gave ourselves too much travel time. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine, Harry,” Hermione said, wiping the imprint of her lip gloss from his face. “I’ll need you as my designated Muggle tech support with this lot today. Go through to the lounge. Ron is there already and they’ve probably got the telly all scrambled by now.”

“Ron’s come early as well, has he?” Angelina said. 

George rushed to finish her thought. “Reckon he must have got the same kind of eyeful we did then.”

Charlie raised a hand to swat at him, but George was quick to point out that it was bad form to strike a man holding an infant.

Hermione had expected Ginny to give her a boisterous welcome to the family, and while she tried her best, smiling and hugging, Ginny was clearly not herself.

“That’s it exactly,” she said when Hermione mentioned it. “I’m not just myself. I’m himself as well.”

Hermione frowned. “Himself?”

A burst of energy seized Ginny and she was taking Hermione by both shoulders, glaring intently into her eyes. “Hermione, listen to me. Weasley-Prewett fertility is not to be trifled with.”

“Yes, I know. But I managed it with Ron for years and now -- “

“No, I need you to understand. It’s bigger than all of us. Do you hear me?”

“Ginny are you saying -- “

“Yes,” she said, hanging her head. “I'm up the duff. Since before the wedding. I would have played another season for the elite league otherwise. But that’s on hold. He should be born this winter. Nothing for it but to be happy.”

Hermione squealed and hugged her, rocked side to side. 

“Yes, let it out,” Ginny said, thumping her back. “You and Charlie are the last to know.”

When they came apart, Hermione was wiping her eyes. “I’m so happy for you. Happy for Harry, getting his family.”

Ginny returned a look of alarm. “Yeah, but it’s nothing to cry about.”

“It’s not just your little one. It’s all of them. George with baby Fred. Percy on his way with Molly Junior. And then all of Bill’s. It’s just -- so much…” She trailed off, overcome with tears again.

Ginny was feeling Hermione’s forehead, as if looking for a fever, her eyes wild. “What's your basal body temperature? By the stars, we may be too late,” she said. “Hermione, you and Charlie, you’re not -- you’re not using charms as contraception alone, are you?”

She blinked. “It’s all we had access to in the Carpathians.”

Ginny was frantic, shaking her head. “Use a potion too. And I’ve heard the Muggles have tricks for it as well. Use all of those. You’ll know how. Get every contraceptive you can, or you’ll wind up like the rest of us.”

“What, you mean deliriously happy?” Harry said, smirking as he returned from the lounge now the television was back in order.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said, embracing him again. “Congratulations on your son.”

Harry grinned at Ginny over Hermione’s shoulder. “Still telling everyone it’s a boy, are you, love? We don’t actually know for sure.”

“You mark my words, Harry Potter,” Ginny said. “This is a dark-haired boy. The second coming of James Potter. I dream about him every few days.”

“Yes, keep telling Hermione all about it. She loves divination. Big believer.”

“Oh,” Hermione said, letting Harry go. “That reminds me. I’ve come back with a burning question about a dragon-related potion. More than a question, really, a massive problem that needs solving -- “

Just at that moment, Bill and his in-laws were coming through the front door. Hermione interrupted herself to dash from the kitchen to welcome them, colliding with Ron as he bolted from the sofa to greet Gabrielle. Both he and Charlie caught Hermione and steadied her as the eerily lovely Delacours came into the dentists’ house.

Gabrielle had barely exchanged extremely polite pleasantries with Hermione when Ron led her through the kitchen and into the back garden.

Fleur had never been friendlier, kissing Hermione's face and pulling her into the cloud of her sweet fragrance. Bill's usual paleness was tanning in the Egyptian sun. It was handsome but Fleur was worried it would age him too quickly. This soon turned into sitting at the foot of a bookcase, researching sunscreen spells with Hermione and Angelina, sharing a few other things they were determined Hermione needed to know about being a Weasley wife.

Preoccupied by her new best friend Fleur, Hermione didn't notice Gabrielle tiptoeing back into the house to drop a hand on Charlie’s arm, batting her eyes and beckoning him with one finger to follow her. She began to walk ahead of him, watching him over her shoulder, her finger now pressed to her lips, signalling for him to come quietly.

"Eh?" Charlie bawled after her. "What’s all this then, Gabrielle?"

Everyone in the kitchen turned to look. Gabrielle clenched her hands into fist, tossing her head and setting aside her enticing manners, lost as they were on Charlie. "Ron would like to speak to you in the garden."

"Give 'im hell, Chuckles!" George called after Charlie as he passed through the door Gabrielle held open for him. She didn't follow him out.

Ron sat in a rickety canvas chair on a weedy patio. Charlie kicked lightly at its back leg to announce himself and nearly brought the whole thing down. Ron gasped and flailed.

"Sorry," Charlie said. "You ready to talk, Ronnie?"

Ron said nothing but repositioned the empty chair beside him for Charlie to fill. He sat in it as carefully as he could.

"I've been thinking about our wand," Ron began. "You know. The one we shared, but at different times."

Charlie sniffed a laugh. "The one Mum said I had to leave behind when I left home and started earning money of my own. Old Olivander assumed I lost the first one and gave me a bit of a scolding over it. Didn't bother to tell him where it actually went. Worried it might reflect badly on Dad and Mum."

Ron hummed. "Ash and unicorn hair it was."

Charlie sighed. "Good wand."

Ron looked Charlie in the face for the first time that day. "Was it?"

"Yeah," Charlie said. "Shock resistant. Never let me down. I was rather gutted when I gave it up to you. Took a full year to get used to the new one."

Ron hummed again. "You should have kept it, mate. I never did get the hang of it. Always thought of it as Charlie's old wand."

Charlie eyed the willow wand Ron was bouncing against his palm, too pliant for Charlie’s liking. "Where did the ash one get to, anyways?" he asked.

"Accidentally snapped it."

"No."

"Yeah. First day of second year, crashing Dad's car. Broke almost completely in two. Just shock resistant enough to keep hanging on by a thread."

Charlie groaned a laugh. "Idiot."

"Yeah. I had to use it held together with sellotape for the rest of the year before they’d get me a new one. Ridiculously harsh punishment."

Charlie tousled Ron's hair. "For destroying my wand? Seems about right to me."

Ron stood up. "Consider it back in your care. Take it all. Fix up the damage I did, and make it do the magic only you could get out of it. That’s all I wanted to say. Hope it’s enough."

Charlie grappled Ron into a hug. With his face in his brother's shoulder, Ron couldn't help but smell Hermione on Charlie's clothes. He breathed it in, but said nothing of it.

\----------------------

No one complained about tasting maths in the meal Hermione had cooked. Everyone but Bill and Fleur’s fussy toddler seemed content, and when dinner was over, Hermione sat down for a serious talk with Harry about dragon tears.

"So you see,” she finished after she explained the situation, “I need an Occlumens, a Legilimens to test them, and then someone who knows about Muggles potion interactions to push my research off in the right direction. You know everyone, there must be someone."

She made her request of him and sat still, silent, not realizing how tightly she was clenching Charlie's hand as she waited for an answer.

Harry sat nodding, silent himself on the Grangers' sofa. As she waited, Hermione looked to Charlie and then to Ron who only shrugged and said, "Don't ask me. I run a joke shop."

From across the room, Bill spoke up. "Say it, Harry. You know who could help. Speak his name."

Harry fidgeted on the sofa. "No, she'd never agree to it."

“Who?” Hermione pounced.

"Harry knows who. And I think she’s able to get past all that. Give her some credit. And him too," Bill said. "He did some consulting work for us at Gringotts before I left. He was competent and pleasant enough, even when he was still chafing under house arrest."

Harry shivered as if he'd bit down on something sour.

Hermione knew that reaction. "Malfoy."

Bill nodded. "Draco Malfoy and his mother are both Occlumens. He was Snape's star potions pupil. And the library at Malfoy Manor holds some rather nasty and arcane knowledge, even -- ”

“That’s enough, Bill,” Harry said, pulling at his hair. “Alright. I’m letting Hermione decide. Do you want their help? If you do, I’ll pay the Malfoys a visit. But after what they did to you when Bellatrix was still alive -- I’d understand if you’d rather go about this your own way.”

She took a breath. Draco Malfoy’s aunt had tortured her in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor while he and his mother stood by doing nothing. But she had been curious, after she read what he’d said at the trials, how both he and his mother had denounced Death Eater ideologies. Did they really mean it? Maybe they did, or just thought they did, and needed a chance like this to show they had changed.

“Let’s do it,” she said. “If they really believe I’m not worthless, let them show us.”

Harry let out his breath. “Right. Give me a sample of your potion and I’ll see to it.”

“Not without me you won't,” Ginny said. “I never trusted the energy between you and Draco.”

The whole room groaned. 

“Honestly, Ginny,” Harry said. 

“Pardon me.” It was Percy, interrupting, standing at the foot of the stairs with a tiny, sleepy baby girl in his arms and Audrey at his elbow, giggling behind her hand. “We were just upstairs looking for a place to put Molly down for a nap, and did you know, Charlie, the bed in the centre room is completely smashed?”

Hermione’s face flushed instantly red.

“Yeah, thanks, Perc,” Charlie said, clipped and dry, final.

But Percy was still talking. “Looks like a rhino stamped all over it. Must have been quite forceful, whatever it was.”

The rest of the room was snickering and Charlie and Hermione whispered somewhat heatedly to each other in Romanian about which one of them had been supposed to mend her childhood bed after -- the incident.

“Right, Percy. I’ll see to it later,” Charlie said.

“Can we put Molly down in the master bedroom then? Or are all your beds smashed? Maybe you've got something else we could use. Like a solidly built table?”

“The master bedroom is fine,” Hermione nearly shouted, saying whatever she had to in order to get Percy to stop. "Baby Molly is welcome to it.”

Laughter followed Percy and Audrey as they went back upstairs. 

“Ah, Percy,” George said, his hand over his heart in tribute. “Taking the mick, as politely as you please.”

Charlie groaned and pulled Hermione into his lap. “What?” he asked when she gave him a questioning look. “Apparently, we’ve got no secrets from these people. So we may as well be comfortable.”

"Don't you know what is missing?" Fleur said. "If you'd just had a proper wedding and kissed in front of all the world, as you should do, it wouldn't be so tense and unsettled. You'd be old and boring like the rest of us, I think."

"Excellent idea, sister Fleur," George said, hopping to his feet and folding his hands like a vicar. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Mr. and Mrs. Charles Weasley. You may now kiss the bride."

Hermione cocked her head at her grinning husband as she sat in his lap. "Come to think of it, we never did get a wedding kiss," she said.

Applause rang out in the Grangers' living room as Charlie Weasley kissed his wife.

\--------------------------------------

Hermione didn’t see Harry again until the morning of Ron’s wedding. He arrived later than anyone would have liked with a very tired and hot Ginny. Now that Hermione knew what to look for, the shape of Ginny's pregnancy was obvious. She didn’t want to rush at the pair of them, demanding answers about the dragon tears, but waiting was excruciating.

It wasn’t until after the ceremony and Ron and Gabrielle’s first dance that Harry finally found her. He sat down and set what remained of the sample vial of dragon tears on the table in front of her and Charlie. Ginny fell into a chair beside him.

“Malfoy says he’s sorry,” Ginny began. “That’s what he said to tell you, Hermione. He’s sorry and with this he’s done everything he can to help you. But he understands if you don’t forgive him. Oh, and he’s turned out gorgeous, and married to Daphne Greengrass’s little sister. They were sweet together, weren’t they Harry?”

He shuddered openly.

“That’s all very touching,” Charlie said, who knew little about the Malfoys, just enough to know he cared nothing for them. “But what did he say about the potion?” 

“Draco and Madam Malfoy went off on their own to test the anti-occlumency effect, not surprisingly,” Harry said. “Occlumency is -- messy. But by the time they came back, they could report that the potion is indeed effective.”

Hermione frowned anyway. “But can we trust their word about an experiment they did in private? Even if they say they’re sorry -- “

Harry was shaking his head. “I got the sense that they truly meant it. It felt like that time in the astronomy tower, when Draco was lowering his wand instead of attacking Dumbledore. I think we can trust him on this.”

“That energy again…" Ginny muttered.

“For the love of Boggarts, Ginny,” Harry protested. “I’ve heard enough about this fantasy of yours -- “

Charlie was keen to get back on track, interrupting. “So the anti-occlumency effect of the tears does indeed suggest that our new dragon cross-breed is similar to the extinct Ural opal-eye. Its tears act the same on wizards, at any rate. Now all we’ve got to do is find out what they do to Muggles.”

Harry was sighing again. “The Malfoys were helpful on that point too, actually. That library of theirs -- it’s got some rather ghastly material. Bill knows because, during the war, they moved some of the more disturbing books into their Gringotts vaults so they wouldn’t be seized in the Ministry raids. And as it turned out,” Harry clenched his eyes closed behind his glasses for a moment, as if clearing away another unpleasant image. “It turns out they have books that document illegal human experimentation, the risky use of magic on Muggles, through charms and potions. It’s all very old -- nothing the Malfoys we know would have been involved in personally, Some of it was done out of morbid curiosity, but some was done as deliberate torture.”

Hermione had gone pale, clutching Charlie’s hand again. “What did the books say, Harry? Tell me.”

“There was a section, a rather large one on triggering madness in Muggles, including memory alteration.” Harry set a second vial on the table, swirling with silvery threads. “The book was written in runes and I couldn’t read it. But I looked at every page and the memory of it is here in this vial. If you get to a Pensieve, you’ll see everything I did.”

Hermione pocketed the vial. “Thank you, Harry. It couldn’t have been easy for you.”

“Oh, it was fine,” Ginny said, threading her arm through Harry’s even as he grumbled.

In solidarity with Ginny, Harry drank nothing at the wedding and neither did Hermione or Charlie. But still, on the morning after it was almost noon by the time Hermione woke up. Charlie had left the bed hours earlier, and as she lay blinking in the midday light, she wondered if it was him making all the racket outside the bedroom window.

She sat up slowly, dropping her legs over the side of the bed, faintly lightheaded. The book she and Fleur and Angelina had been reading together during the house party was still sitting on her nightstand. She flipped its pages, sighed, and brought her wand with her to the bathroom…

Wrapped in her dressing gown, her hair a sight, Hermione found Charlie in the back garden. He had a kerchief tied over his face, a pair of dark protective glasses on his nose, and the rest of him was covered in a fine grey dust. It was his Hephaestus look again. She wondered if she’d ever grow accustomed to it enough to not have her heart thud at the sight of him like this.

Instead of working in fire and metal today, her Hephaestus was carving stone. On the ground in front of him was a large grey rock partially chiseled into smooth curves.

He was filthy but she tucked herself between his arms, against his chest all the same. “Just had to get yourself a project outdoors, didn’t you, Charlie,” she said.

He set down the chisel and the wand he’s been working with, tugged his face free of the kerchief and held her close. “I know it’s overdue, but I finally thought of what I wanted to get you for a wedding present. And I’ve made a start of it here.”

She looked at his work, keeping his arms around her. “Making me something? Out of stone?”

Charlie swayed as he held her, plucking off his safety glasses and stooping to rest his chin on her shoulder. “It’s a Pensieve. To help with your research on the dragon tears. And, if it turns out nicely, to remain in our family as an heirloom through the ages.”

She turned her face to speak against his cheek. “By the stars, Charlie. A Pensieve? Made by hand, out of rock?”

“Where did you think they came from?” he laughed.

“I’d never thought about it seriously. My family doesn’t exactly have its own magic heirlooms,” she said.

He smoothed her hair with his cheek. “Well, it does now.”

“Thank you, darling. I was just going to visit Professor McGonagall and borrow the school’s until I had the entire book read, but this,” she raised his dusty hand to her face and kissed it, leaving the imprint of her lips on his knuckles. “This is like nothing anyone has ever done for me before. How did you learn to do this, Charlie?”

“I’m learning as I go,” he said. “It’s tricky but it shouldn’t be impossible. I am something of a talented wizard, you know.”

She was suddenly quiet, swallowing hard as she said. “You’re not just a wizard. Not for much longer.”

He turned her to face him. “What do you mean by that?”

She smiled even as she felt her eyes filling with the tears that had been coming far too easily lately. “The truth is, my beautiful, beloved Charlie, I’ve been making a gift for you too. Learning about it as I go.”

Charlie waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, he shook his head. “What is then, love? What have you made me?”

She kissed him, his lips salty from working in the heat all morning. “Made you,” she repeated. “Charlie, I’ve made you a father.”

Charlie’s eyes grew wide, and for a moment, Hermione wasn’t sure how he felt. But then he lifted her off the ground and turned them in a circle, laughing and cheering. He stopped turning but still held her -- held them, her and his child. She laid her hands on either side of his face and kissed him, long and sweet.

“So you’re happy with this, Charlie?”

“Happy?” he said as he set her feet on the ground. “Let me explain it this way. When the Pensieve is finished, this will be the second memory I relive.”

“And the first?” she had to ask.

“That will be the one In my room in the settlement, when you told me you use my name to conjure me. That was it for me. That was when I knew I’d live the rest of my life in love with you.”


End file.
